Center Pew Research - The next America: boomers, millennials, and the looming generational showdown

PRAISE FOR THE NEXT AMERICA:

The broad takeaway from Taylors outstanding work is that age and ethnicity are reshaping our country, and even our ways of describing each other, rapidly and meaningfully.

Washington Post

Taylors book raises big questions about how weve generally managed to get along so well despite wildly divergent expectations and economic differences.

Boston Globe

The books greatest strength lies in its detailed analysis of significant trendsfrom politics to lifestyle choicesamong the four generational groups surveyed.... Taylor proves a plainspoken translator of... survey data, and makes... statistical techniques accessible to the lay reader.

Publishers Weekly

Well-written, fact-packed, neatly graphed, comprehensive description of the contemporary US.... Highly recommended.

CHOICE

An incisive survey of vast recent changes in American society and the ever-wider generation gap between baby boomers and millennials.... In this well-written, data-rich book, Taylor... examines the demographic, economic, social, cultural, and technological changes that are reshaping the nation.... An authoritative report and required reading for policymakers.

Kirkus

A terrific primer on the key demographic and economic trends that will impact work, family, and political life in the US.

Inside Higher Ed

The book paints a data-rich portrait how the United States is changing and the coming challenges.

Oregonian

Showed some peculiar trends never before seen in history.

The Source

An eye-opening and wonderfully written account of how swiftly our country is changing, and how we can preserve our social compact across the generational and ethnic divide. A brilliant analyst of public policy and social trends, Paul Taylor offers a hopeful look at Americas future in challenging timesstudded with fact, and penetrating and revealing from page to page. The Next America is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to know where we are, and where we are going.

Richard North Patterson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Loss of Innocence

Informed by decades of research data, The Next America is a lucid exploration of the social, cultural, economic, and demographic trends that are reshaping every corner of our society. Taylors focus is the fundamental generational shifts that are redefining who we are as a people. His analysis of where weve been and where were headed is the best and most comprehensive youll read this year.

Neil Howe, author of The Fourth Turn and Millennials Rising

The Next America provides a lively, readable guided tour through the numbers that will influence how well the young adults of today will support the seniors of tomorrow.

Andrew Cherlin, Griswold Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Marriage Go-Round

A provocative yet balanced assessment of intergenerational relations, filled with invaluable data. Essential reading for citizens and policy-makers alike.

Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

Provocative national polling data by the Pew Research Center address such issues as generational differences and similarities in America; the impact of demographic changes; attitudes toward race, religion, and marriage, and more.

World Wide Work bulletin

To Andy and Stefanie

Copyright 2014, 2015 by Paul Taylor.

All charts, graphs, and figures 2014, 2015, Pew Research Center. All rights reserved.

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Printed in the United States of America.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Paul, 1949

The next America: boomers, millennials, and the looming generational showdown / Paul Taylor.First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-668-4 (paperback electronic) 1. Baby boom generationUnited States. 2. Generation YUnited States. 3. Conflict of generationsUnited States. 4. GenerationsUnited States. 5. United StatesPopulation. I. Title.

HN59.T39 2014

305.20973dc23

2013036139

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Once you get far enough along in life, youre likely to be struck by the distance between the views in front of you and the ones you can still dimly make out in your rearview mirror. I turn 65 this year. The America of my childhoodwith its expanding middle class, secure jobs, intact nuclear families, devout believers, distinct gender roles, polite politics, consensus-building mediais nothing like the country my year-old granddaughter will inherit. Our political, social, and religious institutions are weaker, our middle class smaller, our cultural norms looser, our public debate coarser, our technologies faster, our immigrant-woven tapestry richer, and our racial, ethnic, religious, and gender identities more ambiguous. As a society, weve become more polarized and more tolerantand no matter what were like today, were going to be different tomorrow. Change is the constant.

Were also getting a whole lot older, as is almost every other nation on the planetthe fruits of longer life spans and lower birthrates that are each unprecedented in human history. These new demographics of aging mean that pretty soon we wont be able to pay for all the promises weve made to oldsters like me. So well have to either shrink their social safety net or raise taxes on their children and grandchildren. This reckoning has the potential to set off a generation war, though it doesnt have to.

This book applies a generational lens to explore the many ways America is changing. It pays particular attention to our two outsize generationsthe Baby Boomers, fifty- and sixty-somethings having trouble coming to terms with getting old, and the Millennials, twenty-somethings having trouble finding the road map to adulthood. It looks at their competing interests in the big showdown over entitlement reform that our politicians, much as they might try, wont be able to put off for much longer. It also examines how the generations relate to one another not only as citizens, voters, and interest groups, but as parents, children, and caregivers in an era when the family itself is one of our institutions most buffeted by change.

I dont presume to know how my story ends. Years ago when I was a political reporter I had a weakness for trying to forecast election outcomes. I was about as reliable as a coin flip. Eventually it dawned on me that the future was going to arrive anyway, unbidden by me, and that prediction was something of a mugs game. The only forecasts Ill venture in this book will be about the future we already knowthe parts baked in by the demographics and the data. Mostly my aim is to be a tour guide who explains how our nation got from the middle of the last century to the present, then provides some insights about what this breathtaking journey tells us about the changes yet to come. Ill conclude with some thoughts on how to renegotiate the social compact between the generations on equitable terms for all.