I think you'll find people in the EU compare their situation to the economic situation of their parents. That comparison goes very badly. In the 70s-80s-90s an uneducated worker could support a "suburban" house (newly built, that they'd own after 20 years or so and retire in), stay-at-home wife, car, send 2-3 kids to school and college and have money left over for a yearly holiday with 5 people.

Compare that to even a current PhD making 3k euros per month with house prices starting at 300k for pretty bad (certainly not newly built) and smaller than the one their parents had, and they find they can't afford it on 2 full-time wages.

So "quality of life has dropped dramatically". Yes. Yes it has. In other ways quality of life has advanced, yes, but the basics ... the basics are a disaster.

And this is the situation in the most economically prosperous side of Europe. Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Nordics, France, Germany. If you do the same comparison in the middle or south of France, Northern Italy or Spain it'll be 10x worse. If you do it in Portugal, Southern Italy or Greece, it'll be 100x worse, hence everybody is leaving. And if you do it in Eastern Europe it'll be even worse: everyone (who even remotely can) HAS left.