Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Gen Z has health concerns
Mental health | Gen Z
December 2, 2022 – Across nearly all aspects of health—mental, social, spiritual—young people in Europe feel worse off than their counterparts in other age groups. Larger shares of Gen Z in Europe report poor or very poor health compared with those in other generations, senior partner Martin Dewhurst and coauthors note. Nearly a quarter of Gen Z respondents indicate their mental health has worsened over the past three years. Click through the interactive to see more results.
To read the article, see “Heat waves, the war in Ukraine, and stigma: Gen Z’s perspectives of mental health,” September 27, 2022.
Interactive
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Visual form
Generational lollipop comparison chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart uses four side-by-side health dimensions with colored lollipop marks for Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers. Bracket callouts above the first three dimensions show how much higher Gen Z’s reported poor health is than older cohorts.
What is being compared
It compares the percent of European respondents reporting poor or very poor health across mental, spiritual, social, and physical health dimensions by generation.
Measurement system
The measure is percent of respondents. Each colored dot is a generation, and the vertical lollipop stem connects the dot to the baseline within each health dimension.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The visible slide shows Gen Z highest for mental health, spiritual health, and social health, with callouts of about 5x, 4x, and 3x. Physical health is closer across generations, with baby boomers slightly higher than the others.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart shows Gen Z reporting worse mental, spiritual, and social health than older generations, while the physical-health gap is much less one-directional.
Key standout values or extremes
The mental-health panel has the clearest gap: Gen Z is around 21 percent while baby boomers are around 4 percent. The spiritual-health and social-health panels also show visible Gen Z leads.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
Prev and Next step through the two-slide sequence.
Companion media, when applicable
The chart is the full visual on this page. There is no separate companion audio or video outside the visual.