A paper by Northwestern’s Seung Hyeong Lee and University of Chicago’s Younggeun Yoo finds younger cohorts are increasingly giving up on homeownership as a realistic life goal, with large implications for savings, labor effort and risky investments. The study links the erosion of homeownership hope to higher consumption among renters, lower work intensity and greater appetite for speculative assets like crypto. For higher education, the findings bear on student financial aid, career counseling and alumni giving: diminished homeownership prospects change life planning and wealth accumulation paths of graduates. The research underscores how macroeconomic affordability directly reshapes student and alum behavior over decades.