Long considered behind where they should be in accumulating wealth and saving for retirement, millennials as a group have reversed course—and new data analysis is showing not only that they have caught up to where they should be but that they’ve even surpassed other demographics at the same point in life, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“This group, despite being more educated than earlier cohorts, faced early challenges, as many left school with large student loans and began their careers in the tough job market following the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession,” the center’s researchers wrote in an analysis released last week. “These factors delayed major life milestones, such as getting married and owning a home, and limited their ability to accumulate wealth.”

As a result, millennials were way behind earlier cohorts at the same age and in every category when the center first looked at the state of their finances in 2016. Their low wealth was a source of great concern given that an increase in their life expectancy meant they would have to support themselves for more retirement years than previous generations did, the report said.

But fresh data provided by the Federal Reserve’s 2022 “Survey of Consumer Finances,” published last year, brought some welcome news that has painted a much rosier picture when combined with other trends tracked by the Center for Retirement Research.

For example, while by 2019 millennials had caught up to older demographics in homeownership, marriage rates, employment and earnings, they were still behind in terms of retirement readiness, the center’s report said. This was mostly because of the large amount of their student loans.

But the disruption of the Covid pandemic, combined with the support from the government’s unprecedented fiscal stimulus, meant that employment remained strong and home values rose. A pause on student debt payments meant more money could be directed toward savings, and the stock market, too, ended up significantly higher in 2023, despite a couple of blips along the way.

As a result, while millennials faced a median net wealth-to-income ratio of 56% in 2019, a lower percentage than those enjoyed by Gen Xers and late-stage baby boomers, millennials have since surged ahead and now have a median net wealth-to-income ratio of 136%. By comparison, the ratio among late boomers is now 83% and Gen Xers’ ratio is 54%.

“While millennials are still more likely to have student debt and the value of their debt is higher, clearly other factors have more than compensated for that burden,” the report said.

In addition, “the improvement in wealth holdings among millennials was not just concentrated among the wealthy, but rather occurred across the whole wealth distribution. Strikingly, millennials in each wealth group are better off.”

One reason millennials did so well is that, of the three demographics, they’re more likely to have two incomes, higher incomes and fewer kids, which made room for extra savings during the pandemic, the report said.

They’re also more likely to tilt heavily toward stocks when it comes to investing. More than 60% of millennials hold stocks, mainly in retirement accounts, while only 48% of Gen Xers and 37% of late boomers did at the same age, the report said. And nearly 25% of millennials hold stocks outside of their retirement account—about double that of the two other cohorts.

Millennials in general are unique in several ways, the report concluded. They were the first to grow up with computers; they tend to be confident and optimistic (according to social scientists), and they are more ethnically diverse than previous generations. While non-whites made up just 28% of the late boomer demographic, they represent 45% of millennials, the report said.

“Millennials are also more educated than previous cohorts, with almost half of women and 40% of men having a college degree, compared to only a quarter of late boomers and a third of Gen Xers,” the Center for Retirement Research said. “One would expect that this higher level of education would bode well for work, earnings and wealth accumulation.”