The new Generational Opportunity Index report from BBVA finds that American Millennials have less opportunity than any previous generation currently alive today. We have lower incomes, fewer job opportunities, and are less likely to own homes and cars. But on all of those markers, we are starting to catch up to Generation X and the Baby Boomers, who are the most well-off generations today.

The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed are to blame for our lagging economic opportunities. We came of age during the weakest economy in decades (why do you think we’re crazy-nostalgic for the '90s?) and this has hampered the trajectory of our careers and our lives. Now, we need some solid years of a thriving economy to make up that lost time.

Though things may sound bleak, the BBVA report forecasts a better future for us: “Almost all of the variables for Millennials in our GOI [Generational Opportunity Index] show an upward trajectory, indicating that Millennials’ trajectory is showing broad-based improvement.” Of the included variables, our incomes are making particularly large gains.

So, when will we enjoy the prosperity that other generations have had? Mark your calendar for 2034. That’s when, BBVA estimates, we’ll meet the average standard of living.

If you don’t want to wait until then, the Generational Opportunity Index has some suggestions. Millennials are even faring better than Boomers and Gen-X in certain places. Chief among those places are Midwestern cities: Minneapolis, Des Moines, and Omaha are the top three cities where young adults find the most opportunity. Denver, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. all earned spots in the top ten.

Millennials do score high on one marker of wellbeing: Educational attainment. Education is supposed to be the ticket to a better life, and for our predecessors, it was. But for us to get educated at higher levels than past generations, and then graduate into a world with less opportunity instead of more, only compounds our frustration.

We also earn high marks for labor force participation, although it’s near impossible at this age to somehow not need to work. We all have that one friend who floods our Instagram feed with exotic vacation snaps for what seems like 18 weeks out of the year…what does that person do? And while plenty of us are looking for work, our unemployment rate is higher than average.

The Generational Opportunity Index also uses home ownership as a signal for overall income. However, home prices have risen much faster than average incomes over the past 15 years. Hear that, Mom and Dad? The American Dream will be harder for me than it was for you.

This lends a new dimension to the stereotype of the entitled Millennial. Sure, there are “special snowflakes” among us -- but on the whole, we are asking for the same opportunities that our parents and grandparents had. Each generation has historically passed down a more prosperous version of America than what they inherited. Today’s twenty-somethings did not get that benefit. If the country adopts more pro-growth policies, we can still catch up, and leave a better country to our future children -- if we ever make enough money to afford raising kids.