If you’re a young family struggling to make ends meet, welcome to Generation Squeeze

Baby boomers are gliding into the cushiest retirement in history while young families for the first time won't be living as large as their elders, according to a new study.

"The baby boomers as parents lucked out, and their children for the first time will not enjoy the same standard of living as their parents," said Paul Kershaw, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, told the Globe and Mail. "It's become hard to raise a young family and easier to retire."

Kershaw, the point man for the study by the UBC-based Human Early Learning Partnership, has dubbed them "Generation Squeeze." They're trapped between soaring real estate prices that make home-ownership costly, if not impossible, and incomes that have not risen much in real terms for the last two decades.

It's the kind of gap that impels many of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Young families have a lower standard of living despite the fact the Canadian economy has doubled in size since 1976. Meanwhile, boomers are sitting on a record retirement nest egg thanks to owning homes that have appreciated in value more than 70 per cent in the same period.

"They're approaching retirement with higher incomes and more wealth than any previous generation of retirees," Kershaw said.

The problem is creating a "silent generational crisis" that requires intervention, the study concluded.

"We need to turn our attention to the generation raising young kids," Kershaw told CBC News. "They need new mom and dad benefits, so moms and dads alike, including the self-employed, can share time at home with their kids until they're at least 18 months.

"Thereafter, we need $10-a-day child care and we need new commitments to flex time that currently ignore the family."