Unfortunately, this data set only goes back to 1983. I'm quite sure that if you asked this question in the 1979-1981 era, you would see similar low numbers. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember such survey data being reported by other groups at that time.
I think the response to this question is more reflective of a mood than an indicator of what the future will be. I have virtually no doubt that youth will live better than their parents over the course of their respective lives. I'm doubtful they will live happier lives. (See yesterday's post.)
In some circles, student debt is known as the anti-dowry.
Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time last year and is likely to top a trillion dollars this year as more students go to college and a growing share borrow money to do so.
While many economists say student debt should be seen in a more favorable light, the rising loan bills nevertheless mean that many graduates will be paying them for a longer time.
“In the coming years, a lot of people will still be paying off their student loans when it’s time for their kids to go to college,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com, who has compiled the estimates of student debt, including federal and private loans.
Two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with debt in 2008, compared with less than half in 1993. Last year, graduates who took out loans left college with an average of $24,000 in debt. Default rates are rising, especially among those who attended for-profit colleges.
The mountain of debt is likely to grow more quickly with the coming round of budget-slashing. Pell grants for low-income students are expected to be cut and tuition at public universities will probably increase as states with pinched budgets cut back on the money they give to colleges. ...
And there is this little detail ...
Unlike most other debt, student loans generally cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the government can garnish wages or take tax refunds or Social Security payments to recover the money owed.
Today’s 18-to-29-year-olds value parenthood far more than marriage, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of attitudinal surveys. A 2010 Pew Research survey found that 52% of Millennials say being a good parent is “one of the most important things” in life, while 30% say the same about having a successful marriage .
This means there is a 73% gap in the way Millennials value parenthood more than marriage.
Young Adult Values, Behavior Shift from Late ‘90s
When this same question was posed to 18- to 29-year-olds in 1997, the gap was just 20%. Back then, 42% of the members of what is known as Generation X said being a good parent was one of the most important things in life, while 35% said the same about having a successful marriage.
More significantly, 18-to-29-year-olds were much more likely to be married and/or have children in 1997 than 2010. Forty-one percent of Gen Xers had children in 1997, 14% more than the 36% of Millennials who had children in 2010. And 29% of Gen Xers were married in 1997, 32% more than 22% of Millennials who were married in 2010. ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Young people may crave boosts to their self-esteem a little too much, new research suggests.
Researchers found that college students valued boosts to their self-esteem more than any other pleasant activity they were asked about, including sex, favorite foods, drinking alcohol, seeing a best friend or receiving a paycheck.
“It is somewhat surprising how this desire to feel worthy and valuable trumps almost any other pleasant activity you can imagine,” said Brad Bushman, lead author of the research and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University. ...
... “American society seems to believe that self-esteem is the cure all for every social ill, from bad grades to teen pregnancies to violence,” he said. “But there has been no evidence that boosting self-esteem actually helps with these problems. We may be too focused on increasing self-esteem.”
Study co-author Crocker added, “The problem isn’t with having high self-esteem; it’s how much people are driven to boost their self-esteem. When people highly value self-esteem, they may avoid doing things such as acknowledging a wrong they did. Admitting you were wrong may be uncomfortable for self-esteem at the moment, but ultimately it could lead to better learning, relationships, growth, and even future self-esteem.”
Kay S. Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adolescence.
Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men. ...
... But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It's no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today's pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.
What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends. ...
... What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.
Today's pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn't say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can't act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.
Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised. ...
A new portrait of single Americans, drawn from a major new survey, suggests the attitudes and behaviors of today's singles are quite unlike their counterparts just a few decades ago.
Findings show men are more interested in love, marriage and children than their peers in earlier times; women want more independence in their relationships than their mothers did; and hooking up and one-night stands aren't necessarily meaningless sexual encounters.
The researchers say the nationally representative survey of more than 5,000 men and women is the largest and most comprehensive study of single adults to date. And it reveals a sea change in gender expectations.
"Men are now expressing some traditionally female attitudes, while women are adopting some of those long attributed to men," says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who helped develop the survey with social historian Stephanie Coontz and Justin Garcia, a doctoral fellow with the Institute for Evolutionary Studies at Binghamton (N.Y.) University.
"For me, as a historian, it's just amazing confirmation about what has changed in the last 40 years," says Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.
The online survey of singles ages 21 and older was conducted by market research firm MarketTools for the Dallas-based dating website Match.com. Fisher, a research professor at Rutgers University, is a scientific adviser for a division of Match.com.
Data show men are quicker to fall in love and more likely than women to want children: 54% of men say they have experienced love at first sight, compared with 44% of women; among singles without children under 18, more men (24%) than women (15%) say they want children.
And, across every age group, women want more independence than men in their relationships: 77% of women say having their personal space is "very important," vs. 58% for men; 78% of women say the same about having their own interests and hobbies (vs. 64% for men). And 35% of women (vs. 23% of men) say regular nights out with the guys/girls are important. ...
BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.
Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily, reported The Courier-Mail.
Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.
Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations.
Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: "Women of today tend to be busier, juggling more roles, and are quite prepared to compromise a bit of the homemade just to save some time.
"They also have a lot more disposable income compared with their mums and their grandmothers so buying a cake mix or lamingtons ready-made is not a big deal." ...
One of my favorite Hallmark Cards has a '50s-era woman wearing an apron. She stands before an unfinished cake and holds a mixing bowl as she gleefully stirs the contents with a spoon. You open the card, which reads, "Why do you suppose she took the icing out of the can and put it in the bowl?"
Who will be the next speaker of the House of Representatives? What is the current inflation rate? How would you describe the current relationship between India and Pakistan? If you are younger than age 30, odds are you do not know the answer to these questions. Just 14% of young adults can identify John Boehner as the next speaker (closer to half of older adults can do so). Only 7% know the inflation rate is close to 1% (though, few in any age group know this). And just 27% know relations between India and Pakistan are unfriendly (just under half of older adults know this). In fact, on a 13-question political news quiz, adults ages 18 to 29 score below all other age groups on all but two questions. Young adults are by far the most knowledgeable on technology: 42% can identify Google's new phone as the Android (only 4% of adults ages 65 and older can). And, surprisingly enough, Millennials also score the best on a question about government spending. Close to half (45%) know the federal government spends more on defense than three other programs listed, while just a third of adults older than age 50 know this. Read more
As America undergoes dramatic, uneven changes, it may become harder to govern.
AMERICA is getting used to political upheaval. Barack Obama’s election was, to many voters, a moment of transformation. His first two years, many others lamented, brought a dangerous expansion of government; now the right has arisen again. The new Congress will be more polarised than at any time since Reconstruction, reckon some political scientists. But these swings, however large and consequential, are arguably only symptoms.
If people feel as if the country is changing quickly, that’s because it is. The first set of numbers from the 2010 decennial census will be published in December. They will, sadly, be less interesting than in previous decades, as the census form has been radically shortened this time. But plenty of other data get collected by the Census Bureau every year, and our trawl of what has been gathered over the past decade already reveals some seismic shifts. Baby boomers are retiring in large numbers; the young are more racially diverse than ever. Hispanic immigrants are transforming communities, bringing both promise and tension. The first decade of the 21st century was not kind to America’s middle class—real median household income was 7% lower in 2009 than it was in 2000. The gap between rich and poor widened (see table). And the young are doing relatively badly in education.
All these trends are enough to shake a nation. Just as important, however, is that they are playing out very differently from one part of the country to another. Of course, some variation is inevitable; but as the fault lines that criss-cross the country widen, finding political consensus becomes ever more difficult.
In one important respect America has a sunny demographic outlook. Its elderly may be growing in number but, to the envy of other developed countries, America also has a burgeoning young population. However the distribution of old and young makes this picture more complex. ...
The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey, conducted in association with TIME magazine, and complemented by an analysis of demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A new "marriage gap" in the United States is increasingly aligned with a growing income gap.
Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder.
The survey finds that those in this less-advantaged group are as likely as others to want to marry, but they place a higher premium on economic security as a condition for marriage.
The survey also finds striking differences by generation. In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all twenty-somethings were married. In 2008, just 26% were.
How many of today's youth will eventually marry is an open question. For now, the survey finds that the young are much more inclined than their elders to view cohabitation without marriage and other new family forms -- such as same-sex marriage and interracial marriage -- in a positive light.
Even as marriage shrinks, family -- in all its emerging varieties -- remains resilient. The survey finds that Americans have an expansive definition of what constitutes a family. And the vast majority of adults consider their own family to be the most important, most satisfying element of their lives.
Here is a summary of the key findings of the report: ...
... Today, Nachreiner and other first Boomers — such as Kathy Casey-Kirschling (born 12:00:01 a.m. ET in Philadelphia) and Jim Sickler (born 12:00:01 a.m. CT in St. Louis) — are six weeks from turning 65. On Dec. 1, a month before reaching their milestone, they become eligible for Medicare.
They're the leading edge of a juggernaut that, from Khe Sanh to Woodstock, Play-Doh to Viagra, "wrapped our culture around itself like no generation before or since," Gillon writes in his history, Boomer Nation.
As they've moved through the years like a demographic pig in a python, the 77 million Baby Boomers have redefined each stage of life, says Ken Dychtwald, an expert on generational change. And, he predicts, they will change the next stage, too.
But how will a generation defined by its youthfulness and optimism deal with old age and hard times?
Raised in affluent times and imbued with high expectations, the first Boomers now face the ironic prospect of longer yet crimped lives. Their homes and savings are worth less than a few years ago, and health care and energy cost more.
Although many will need (or want) to work past 65, there's less work to be had. Tobi Morgan, a real estate agent who was Utah's first Boomer, hung out her shingle in South Florida just before the housing market crashed; Ann Fry, born Jan. 1, 1946, in Miami, saw the recession dry up her career coaching practice; Mary Pfeiffer, a Dayton, Ohio, first Boomer, worries about Medicare's ability to cover treatment of her severe scoliosis.
"We tried to save for retirement, but we were always a day late and a dollar short," she says. Her husband, a retired postal worker, works the early shift at a deli counter. ...
... But the biggest question raised by the Boomers' senior moment is how it will affect the politics of Social Security and Medicare, and the nature of retirement.
Boomers' sheer numbers (one will be turning 65 every 8 seconds) threaten to overwhelm the federal budget with rising costs for the entitlement programs.
Gillon questions the assumption that, as in the case of the World War II generation, Boomers' political clout will protect the entitlement status quo, even if it means passing on the bill to later generations. Boomers never have been politically cohesive, and — like the general electorate — they're becoming more polarized, he says.
And they have something else at stake: their reputation.
Slightly more than half of Americans think the Boomers have made things better for the generations that came after them, compared with 4 in 10 who think they've made things worse, according to the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. Asked whether "giving" or "selfish" better describes Boomers, 57% chose the former, 37% the latter.
Neil Howe, a consultant who studies generational change, says the Boomers will forfeit their reputation for spirituality, authenticity, wisdom — for what President George H.W. Bush called the "vision thing" — if they appear to be acting selfishly in the entitlements debate.
Selflessness won't be easy because, as Jane Dunlap puts it: "Our retirement is not going to be our parents' retirement."
That retirement came abruptly, usually around 65, and completely. But now, "this generation will drive the final nail in the coffin of '40 years and a gold watch,' " Gillon says.
Although most blue-collar Boomers will retire as soon as they can afford to, some others want to keep working even if they don't have to.
"They'll have to carry me out on a flip chart," says Vicki Thomas.
Consider two new models of first Boomer non-retirement: ...
Religion is largely irrelevant to most young people, who rely instead on a “secular trinity” of themselves, their family and their friends to give meaning to their lives, a new book claims.
The study published by the Church of England concludes that people born after 1982 - known as "Generation Y" - have only a “faded cultural memory” of Christianity.
For many young people, religious observance extends no further than praying in their bedrooms during moments of crisis, on a “need to believe basis”.
The findings are contained a new book, The Faith of Generation Y, whose authors include the Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth.
Sylvia Collins-Mayo, principal lecturer in sociology at Kingston University, said most of the 300 young people questioned for the study were not looking for answers to “ultimate questions”.
“For the majority, religion and spirituality was irrelevant for day-to-day living,” she said. “On the rare occasions when a religious perspective was required, for example coping with family illnesses or bereavements, they often ‘made do’ with a very faded, inherited cultural memory of Christianity in the absence of anything else.”
The authors described this approach as “bedroom spirituality”. Some teenagers prayed for the health of loved ones or for success in relationships and exams, while others made “confessions” in an attempt to express their anxieties.
But most young people today define themselves by a “secular trinity of family, friends and the reflexive self”, giving them an “immanent faith” based on relationships in this world, the study found. ...
Most people assume that working-class members of the baby-boomer generation have been hurt the most by the outsourcing and automation in which millions of factory jobs moved overseas or disappeared into computer chips, a shift recently compounded by recession. But actually it may be their children's generation.
Not only are many members of the younger working class unprepared for the contemporary job market. New research we have done shows their striking inability to fit the middle-class ideal in family and religious life. It's a worrisome development for their lifestyle and our culture.
These are the people we used to call "blue collar," although you can no longer tell a person's social class by the color of his shirt. If we can speak of a working class at all, education is now the best way to define them.
Think of people with high school degrees but not four-year college degrees. They make up slightly more than half of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 44; old enough to have completed their schooling but young enough to be still having children, and 79% of them are white. Because they don't have the educational credentials to get most middle-class professional and managerial jobs, their earnings have sunk toward the wages of the working poor.
The grim employment picture is familiar, but what's less widely known is that they are losing not only jobs but also their connections to basic social institutions such as marriage and religion. They're becoming socially disengaged, floating away from the college-educated middle class.
Consider the settings in which they have children. According to surveys by the National Center for Health Statistics, much of the recent rise in childbearing outside of marriage reflects a rise in births to cohabiting couples rather than to women living alone. The percentage of working-class women of all races who were cohabiting when they gave birth rose from 10% in the early 1990s to 27% in the mid-2000s—the largest increase of any educational group.
These working-class couples still value marriage highly. But they don't think they have what it takes to make a marriage work. Across all social classes, in fact, Americans now believe that a couple isn't ready to marry until they can count on a steady income. That's an increasingly high bar for the younger working class. As a result, cohabitation is emerging as the relationship of choice for young adults who have some earnings but not enough steady work to reach the marriage bar.
The problem is that cohabiting relationships don't go the distance. In fact, children who are born to cohabiting parents are more than twice as likely as children born to married parents to see their parents break up by age five. These break-ups are especially troubling because they are often followed by a relationship-go-round, where children are exposed to a bewildering array of parents' partners and stepparents entering and exiting their home in succession.
Church-going habits are changing, too. Traditionally, working-class couples who are married and have steady incomes have attended church, in part, to get reinforcement for the "respectable" lives they lead. But now, when a transformed economy makes marriage and steady work more difficult to attain, those who in better times might have married and attended church appear to be reluctant to show up. Thus, working-class men and women aren't going to religious services as often as they used to.
The drop-off in attendance has been greatest among whites, according to the General Social Survey, conducted biennially by the National Opinion Research Center. In the 1970s, 35% of working-class whites aged 25-45 attended religious services nearly every week, the same percentage as college-educated whites in that age group. Today, the college-educated are the only group who attend services almost as frequently as they did in the 1970s. ...
Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled -- from 22% to 42% over the past year. ...
Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites. ...
One-in-ten (11%) online adults ages 50-64 and one-in-twenty (5%) online adults ages 65 and older now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others. ...
Email and online news are still more appealing to older users, but social media sites attract many repeat visitors.
The most depressing aspect of this story is that I qualify as an "older adult."
Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause. ...
(Reuters Life!) - Younger Americans, between the ages of 36 to 50, are more likely to be loyal to religion than Baby Boomers, according to new research.
In a study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Philip Schwadel, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said this was true even though they were less likely than previous generations to have been brought up with a religion.
He said the trend "is good news for those who worry about declining religious adherence."
Schwadel attributed the younger generation's overall loyalty to religion to a less staid and more innovative religious scene in America today, while religion in the past was more conservative, less diverse and stricter.
If people are not happy with one religion now, they can easily switch to a different denomination or faith, he added. ...
The impact of Millennials as parents is changing the marketplace.
Hard to believe but true — Millennials, those born after 1980, are growing up and having families. While they’re not yet the primary demographic in the parenting cohort, 34 percent of today’s 18- to 29-year-olds already have children, according to Pew Research Center for People and the Press. And the majority of those who haven’t yet had kids plan to do so in the future.
Over the last year, we’ve noted the emergence of brands, media, and experiences designed to connect with the particular mindset of Millennial parents.
The rate at which these changes are surfacing suggests that a marketplace shift is not only under way but also gaining momentum. This makes it critical that brands pay close attention to how the new moms and dads tackle this life stage, if they want to capture the Millennials as potential customers.
As anyone who’s had Millennials on their radar recently can tell you — they’re different.
Technology is normal, not novel. One defining characteristic of the Millennial generation is its relationship with technology. This generation grew up totally tech connected and not at all wowed by new developments — better, faster, cheaper are the norm. ...
... Listening to new voices. While the Millennial’s propensity to use new technologies for traditional parenting tasks is reflective of the general transition to digital living, there are more fundamental shifts to consider as well — ones that affect the underlying experience of being a parent today.
For the generation that lives on Facebook, parenting is an increasingly public, not private, experience. The sense of isolation that plagued previous generations of mothers — and helped drive the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s — is being replaced with a 24/7 community bound by the desire for honestly shared experience. ...
... Unique generational identity. Another characteristic parent-relevant brands can tap is the Millennial’s sense of generational identity. Members of the Millennial generation view themselves — although not other generations — as part of a distinct tribe, and 61 percent say that their generation is unique, according to Pew.
Customization is a given. Millennials grew up expecting to have things their way — being able to express one’s individuality is considered a fundamental right. These attitudes help explain why Pew’s research found that more than 38 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds have opted for tattoos, with 69 percent having at least two tattoos. ...
... They are also obsessed with celebrities, and are the only generation to have grown up believing they would be both rich and famous. Note the rising popularity of the Celebrity Baby Blog (acquired by Time Warner’s People.com in May 2008), Celebrity Baby Scoop, and Babyrazzi, as well as the mushrooming of product-focused baby articles written by celebs.
Color them green. As the first generation to have grown up celebrating Earth Day, the Millennial generation has a well-developed ecosensibility. No surprise then to note the number of green brands that have sprung up over the last year targeted to parents of small children.
Seventh Generation is the first to market chlorine-free disposable diapers, with online ads encouraging moms to not just “change your baby. Change the planet.”
Retail giant Toys R Us introduced its own line of natural wooden toys and natural cotton plush animals on Earth Day. The packaging, identified by a green “R” seal with the words “Recycle, Renew, Reuse, Re-think,” contains 70 percent recycled material.
Consumer-culture observers from Iconoculture recently spotted an organic pacifier from the Danish company Natursutten. Made from pure Hevea brasiliensi rubber, it is 100 percent biodegradable.
Taking a page out of the Netflix playbook, the BabyPlays Toy Rental program lets members rent more than 250 toys, adding a new dimension to the rent-versus-buy debate among young parents.
Opportunities for Targeting
Emerging and yet-to-be-invented brands have a unique opportunity in this changing marketplace. By mirroring the Millennial generation’s perception of themselves as a distinct tribe, they can become the brands that this generation of parents owns.
Established family-centered brands will need to evolve their messaging, and possibly their core ideas as well, to remain relevant. ...
WASHINGTON -- The suicide rate, once highest among those older than 80, now tops out among people in the 45 to 54 age group, according to a CDC report on violent deaths.
In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, the suicide among those ages 45 to 54 was 17.6 per 100,000 population, CDC researchers reported in a surveillance summary published on May 14 by the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Next highest rates were in the 75 to 84 and 35 to 44 age groups at 16.4 and 16.3 per 100,000 respectively.
This marks the second year in a row that the suicide rate among middle-age adults has surpassed that in the oldest group.
Children 10 to 14 had the lowest suicide rate (0.8 per 100,000) and the rate among older teenagers (6.9 per 100,000) was about half that of those 30 or older. ...
In 2005, I did a post about Generation X, which William Strauss and Neal Howe define as those born between 1961 and 1980. In the middle of that post, I wrote about the sub-group born 1961-1964, folks that are about 45-50 years old today:
... For Generation X, it was one of continued ascent out of dysfunction. The group of children born 1961-1964 was the most dysfunctional cohort of the century. Strauss and Howe used a number of measures shown in the graph below. Compared to any other young adult cohort in the past several decades, this group was responsible for the lowest aptitude scores and the highest rates of alcohol consumption, violent crime, drunk driving, substance abuse, arson, and marijuana consumption. From my own study, I know you can add suicide to the list.
All of these dysfunctions slowly began to subside with the Xers born after 1964, ...
Some have described the group of folks born between 1954-1965 as Generation Jones. That is inclusive of this high suicide cohort. I was born squarely in the middle of the group. It will be interesting to see what social scientists identify as the key factors for the rise in suicide for this group at this time.
This report examines the changing demographic characteristics of U.S. mothers by comparing women who gave birth in 2008 with those who gave birth in 1990. It is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau. It also presents results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey that asked a range of questions about parenthood.
Among the key findings of this report:
Age: Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true -- 10% of births were to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.
Marital Status: A record four-in-ten births (41%) were to unmarried women in 2008, including most births to women in their early 20s. In 1990, 28% of births were to unmarried women. The unmarried-mother share of births has increased most sharply for whites and Hispanics, although the highest share is for black women.
Race and Ethnicity: White women made up 53% of mothers of newborns in 2008, down from 65% in 1990. The share of births to Hispanic women has grown dramatically, to one-in-four.
Education: Most mothers of newborns (54%) had at least some college education in 2006, an increase from 41% in 1990. Among mothers of newborns who were ages 35 and older, 71% had at least some college education.
Explaining the Trends: All the trends cited above reflect a complex mix of demographic and behavioral factors. For example, the higher share of college-educated mothers stems both from their rising birth rates and from women's increasing educational attainment. The rise in births to unmarried women reflects both their rising birth rates and the shrinking share of adults who are married.
Attitudes about Parenthood: When asked why they decided to have their first (or only) child, the overwhelming majority of parents (87%) answer, "The joy of having children." But nearly half (47%) also say, "There wasn't a reason; it just happened."
Only about six-in-ten members of the Millennial generation (62%) were raised by both parents -- a smaller share than was the case with older generations. That compares with 71% of Gen Xers, 85% of Boomers and 87% of Silents. Roughly one quarter of Millennials (24%) say their parents were divorced or separated, and 11% say their parents were never married (2% say their parents were widowed and 1% did not answer the question). Still, in weighing their own life priorities, Millennials (like older adults) place parenthood and marriage far above career and financial success. But they aren't rushing to the altar -- just one-in-five Millennials (21%) are married now. Still, they get along well with their parents. Looking back at their teenage years, Millennials report having had fewer spats with mom or dad than older adults say they had with their own parents when they were growing up. And now, hard times have kept a significant share of adult Millennials and their parents under the same roof. About one-in-eight older Millennials (ages 22 and older) say they've "boomeranged" back to a parent's home because of the recession. Read more
Members of the Millennial generation (young adults born after 1980) are much less likely to be married than were members of preceding generations at the same age. Just one-in-five Millennials is currently married (21%) and just one-in-eight (12%) is married with children at home, half the proportions (42% and 26%, respectively) of Boomers at the same age. Millennials are also more likely to be single parents living with their children (8%) than Boomers (4%) at the same age. And, whether married or single, Millennials are less likely than Boomers at the same age to both be parents and be living in the same household with their child or children (20% versus 30%). However, Millennials are more likely to be living with other family members (47%), such as their parents, than were the immediate two previous generations at the same age (Gen Xers, 43%; Boomers, 39%). They also are more likely than others had been at the same stage of life to be cohabiting with a partner or living with a roommate. Read more
Most young adults today don't pray, don't worship and don't read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.
If the trends continue, "the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships," says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. In the group's survey of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% say they're "really more spiritual than religious."
Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, "many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only," Rainer says. "Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith."
Key findings in the phone survey, conducted in August and released today:
•65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.
•65% rarely or never attend worship services.
•67% don't read the Bible or sacred texts.
Many are unsure Jesus is the only path to heaven: Half say yes, half no.
"We have dumbed down what it means to be part of the church so much that it means almost nothing, even to people who already say they are part of the church," Rainer says.
The findings, which document a steady drift away from church life, dovetail with a LifeWay survey of teenagers in 2007 who drop out of church and a study in February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which compared the beliefs of Millennials with those of earlier generations of young people. ...
Facing high unemployment, millennials draw resilience from flexible goals, tech savvy, and parental cushions. Will these supports help them emerge strong from the economic downturn?
It's been more than 50 years since such a large share of America's young people – 37 percent, by one study – were out of work.
But even as the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression played havoc with their career plans, the so-called Millennial Generation (ages 18 to 29) is coming of age with their characteristic "help save the world" optimism largely undimmed. So far, at least, hard times and rampant unemployment have not left the same searing mark on today's young adults that some previous recessions did on the young people of their day.
"Their response to hard times is to band together and fix the institutions that have failed them," says Morley Winograd, author of books and studies on the Millennial Generation. "They approach the problem with optimism and a can-do attitude, unlike the way other generations might react to the same experience when they were young."
There are a number of reasons for the chin-up stance. ...
... This is partly because Japanese people live longest: men can expect to reach 79 and women 86. It is also partly because the Japanese have almost given up having babies: the fertility rate is just 1.2 children per woman, far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. The rest of the world is following Japan's example. In 19 countries, from Singapore to Iceland, people have a life expectancy of about 80 years. Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now. Meanwhile, women around the world have half as many children as their mothers. And if Japan is the model, their daughters may have half as many as they do. ...
... The revolution has two aspects. First, we are not producing babies like we used to. In just a generation, world fertility has halved to just 2.6 babies per woman. In most of Europe and much of east Asia, fertility is closer to one child per woman than two, way below long-term replacement levels. The notion that the populations of places such as Brazil and India will go on expanding looks misplaced: in fact, they could soon be contracting. Meanwhile, except in a handful of AIDS-ravaged countries in Africa, people are living longer everywhere.
This is frightening, even for rich nations. In Germany, France and Japan, there are fewer than two taxpaying workers to support each retired pensioner. In Italy, the figure is already fewer than 1.3. Some predict that the world will face a wave of "ageing recessions". ...
... In future, old people will be expected to stay in the formal economy for longer. The idea of a retirement age was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, when as chancellor of Germany he needed a starting age for paying war pensions. He chose the age of 65 because that was typically when ex-soldiers died. But today in developed countries, and soon in poorer ones, women can expect nearly 30 years of retirement, and men 20 years. ...
... Some worry that an older workforce will be less innovative and adaptable, but there is evidence that companies with a decent proportion of older workers are more productive than those addicted to youth. This is sometimes called the Horndal effect, after a Swedish steel mill where productivity rose by 15 per cent as the workforce got older. Age brings experience and wisdom. Think what it could mean when the Edisons and Einsteins of the future, the doctors and technicians, the artists and engineers, have 20 or 30 more years to give us. ...
... At 50, we do not expect to act or feel as we did at 20 - nor at 80 as we did at 50. The same is true of societies. What will it be like to live in societies that are much older than any we have known? We are going to find out, because the ageing of the human race is one of the surest predictions of this century. If the 20th century was the teenage century, the 21st will be the age of the old: it will be pioneered by the ageing baby boomers who a generation ago took the cult of youth to new heights. Without the soaring population and so many young overachievers, the tribal elders will return. More boring maybe, but wiser, surely.
The older we are, the less likely we are to be hooked on the latest gizmos and the more we should appreciate things that last. We may even reduce pressure on the world's resources by consuming less, and by conserving our environment more. We must especially hope for that, because unless the boomers can pay reparations for youthful indiscretions with the planet's limits then we may all be doomed.
The 20th century did great things. We should be proud that for the first time most children reach adulthood and most adults grow old. But after our exertions, perhaps we need to slow down a bit. Take a breather. Learn to be older, wiser and greener. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Here's to Ushi Okushima.
The multi-generational family household has been returning in the US since 1980 and at an accelerated pace during the current recession, according to the Pew Research Center.
Share of Population in Multi-Generational Household Reaches Pre-1960 Level
In 2008, an estimated 49 million Americans, or 16% of the population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation. In 1980, this figure was just 28 million, or 12% of the population. The last time this high a percentage of the US population lived in a multi-generational family household was in the late 1950s. By 1960, the share had dropped to 15%.
This 33% increase since 1980 in the share of all Americans living in such households represents a sharp trend reversal. From 1940 to 1980, the share of Americans living in such households had declined by more than half, dropping from 25% in 1940 to 12% in 1980.
The so-called “Great Recession,” which most economists believe began in December 2007, created a spike in multi-generational family household growth. Between 2007 and 2008, the number of Americans living in a multi-generational family household grew by 2.6 million, or 0.8% of the entire US population.
Minorities More Likely to Live in Multi-Generational Households
The return of the multi-generational household is disproportionately occurring among minority populations in the US. Twenty-five percent of Asian Americans live in a multi-generational family household, along with 23% of black Americans and 22% of Hispanic Americans. In contrast, only 13% of white Americans live in a multi-generational family household. ... Other Findings
The multi-generational family household trend is especially affecting the elderly and young. About one in five adults ages 25 to 34 lives in a multi-generational family household, as does one in five adults ages 65 and older.
After rising steeply for nearly a century, the share of adults ages 65 and older who live alone flattened out around 1990 and has since declined a bit. It currently stands at 27%, up from 6% in 1900.
Older adults who live alone are less healthy and they more often feel sad or depressed than their counterparts who live with a spouse or with others. These correlations stand up even after controlling for demographic factors such as gender, race, age, income and education. ...
Are we in the middle of a "Fourth Turning," as William Strauss and Neil Howe described? I know some of my readers roll their eyes at this stuff about generations, but a couple of years ago, I did an eleven-part series (Index) on Strauss and Howe's work, focusing primarily on their books Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 and The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy written in the 1990s. S&H don't believe that history repeats itself, but it rhymes. They see a four-part rhythm to events tied to recurring cycles of archetype generations. They believe we have entered a fourth turning in the past decade and that the fourth turning will play out through the rest of this decade. Characteristic of the fourth turning is a rancorous civil strife leading to a climactic set of events that sets in motion the consensus for the next several decades.
At the core of S&H's thesis is the idea that there is a repeating cycle of four generational archetypes. Each generation comprises people born within approximately twenty years, give or take a few years. The types are the Hero, the Artist, the Prophet, and the Nomad, which repeat in that order. Every twenty years, one archetype dies off while society is giving birth to the successor version of the dying archetype. This is not to say that everyone in a given generation exhibits the characteristic of the archetype, but in the aggregate, and in terms of the type of leadership that emerges, the archetype gives each generation a distinctive feel.
About every twenty years, there is an alignment where each generation is located overwhelmingly within a particular part of the lifecycle: childhood, young adult, mature adult, and elderhood. This alignment signals a shift in the culture from one turning or "mood" into the next. There are four turnings that follow in succession: 1. High, 2. Awakening, 3. Unraveling, and 4. Crisis. (They can also be likened to spring, summer, fall, and winter.) The high comes after resolving a great crisis and is characterized by a civic spirit and general optimism. The Awakening is a period of spiritual awakening and turning inward to address issues suppressed in the previous Crisis and High periods. The Unraveling is an increasingly inward-focused era where societal institutions fray and fall apart. Escalating rancor and coarseness become part of life. The Crisis usually features escalating societal division that finally gets resolved while addressing some major social crisis like a war or economic collapse. The resolution gives way to a new High, and the cycle starts again. A complete cycle is called a saeculum. S&H would suggest we are in the first 5-10 years of a Fourth Turning, a Crisis era.
The four generations driving events in this Crisis era are categorized as follows:
Silent Generation (Artist). Born 1925-1942
Baby Boom Generation (Prophet). Born 1943-1960
Thirteenth Generation or Gen X (Nomad). Born 1961-1981
Millennial (Hero). Born 1982-2000?
The Prophet Generation, in this case, Boomers, is the wild card in the Crisis era. Boomers were brought up to question things, were told they could accomplish anything, and were filled with visions of making a new and better world by their parents, who had just endured a tremendous crisis. They had a destiny to fulfill.
In youth, Boomers began challenging tradition with idealistic visions that ranged from the noble to the utterly narcissistic. As they moved into adulthood, they became increasingly inward-focused while still bending the world toward meeting their perceived needs. In the Crisis era, a prophet generation enters a stage of life where they begin to confront their own mortality. The kids are grown, and there is an acute awareness that all those idealistic visions from their youth have not been realized. Suddenly the clock is running out. Urgent action is needed to fulfill the idealism they once felt in their youth.
Yet there is one problem: there are polar versions of what the new vision should look like within the generation. For instance, polls on controversial issues like the Vietnam War show that Boomers register the highest percentage of people who intensely feel the war was wrong. But Boomers also register the highest percentage of people who intensely feel the war was right. This dynamic leads to a combative, winner-takes-all, take no prisoners mindset in the public square.
Meanwhile, the Boomers are sandwiched between two very different generations. The Silent Generation (Artist) grew up in awe of the sacrifices and accomplishments of the G.I generation (Hero) that preceded them. But they often found themselves uneasy with the self-confident, often cold, and mechanistic feel of the G.I. generation. They value the more humanistic and idealistic elements of the Boomers, but they are often disturbed by the Boomer's disregard for what those before them have contributed and are particularly put off by the Boomers' rancorous way of addressing problems. The Silent generation is the generation of consensus, bi-partisanship, and fair process.
Meanwhile, the Gen X generation (Nomads) have grown up in a time of decaying institutions and child neglect. Divorce increased while they were children, and adults went somewhere to "find themselves." As the Fourth Turing unfolds. Gen Xers are evermore focused on what kind of world their children will inherit. They want them to have a better and more wholesome world than they grew up with. Societal institutions are not seen as allies; all of their energy is consumed with trying to make life work at the most elemental levels. They grow increasingly impatient with the grandiose idealism of Boomers and their antics, pushing things ever closer to the brink of chaos.
Finally, the Millennial generation (Hero) emerges on the scene. Boomers see this new generation as the folks who will partner with them in their idealistic visions, whichever variety of visions that may be.
What S&H suggest is that in the Fourth Turning, idealism is needed to surmount the Crisis problems. The Prophet generation often plays an important role in this respect, but they are ever at the brink of spiraling out of control. The Artist generation and the Nomad generation act as a brake on the Prophets' excesses.
So far in American history, the Artists and the Nomads have been successful every time but one. That was in the 1860s. Idealistic Prophet abolitionists and Prophet Southerners succeeded in leading others into their idealistic crusades that resulted in the American Civil War. At the beginning of the war, about 90% of Congress was of the Prophet generation. In 1865 it was still 73%. In the two elections after the war, the Prophet generation dropped to 44%. S&H points out that this is the only time in American history where the stats show an entire generation being voted out of office in such short order.
From Bush being a Nazi who secretly conspired to bring down the World Trade Center to Obama being a socialist who wants to kill babies, does this feel familiar? What do you think?
Expectations hitting workplace reality of tepid growth in salary, benefits.
Millennials want more vacation and time for themselves away from the job than young people did 30 years ago, and they also value compensation more, according to a recent study.
That may be setting them up for intense disappointments in today's labor market.
Those born starting in the early 1980s put a bigger emphasis on time away from work than previous generations, like Gen X. They're slightly less likely to say that work should be "a very central part" of one's life, and tend to value a job more for salary and advancement opportunities rather than as a source of friends or an avenue to learn new skills.
Millennials, the youngest generation in American workplaces, may see time off as necessary because of how hard they saw their parents work, said San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge. She has a study analyzing generational differences in attitudes toward work in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Management.
But as unemployment has grown for young people, their expectations for money, job promotion and leisure time are encountering workplace reality. In today's world, that means tepid growth in salaries and benefits, and heavy competition for positions.
The Conference Board, a private research group, said in January that job satisfaction for those under 25 was at a record low in 2009. ...
Take our 14 item quiz and we’ll tell you how "Millennial" you are, on a scale from 0 to 100, by comparing your answers with those of respondents to a scientific nationwide survey. You can also find out how you stack up against others your age.
I scored 23. Halfway between the average Boomer and average Gen Xer.
(CNN) -- Ministering to young adults at New York's Riverside Church, the Rev. J. Lee Hill Jr. hasn't had much success in recruiting for Sunday morning services.
But his mission trips to New Orleans, Louisiana, since Hurricane Katrina and his efforts to connect with older teens and 20-somethings -- the so-called millennial generation -- via Facebook have paid big dividends.
"Church is difficult because young people today want to engage actively," Hill said. "They just want to experience God."
A study released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life appears to bear that out. On the one hand, it finds that young Americans are significantly less religious than their parents and grandparents were when they were young. But the report also suggests that many of the beliefs and faith-based practices of 18- to 29-year-olds mirror those of their elders.
One in four American millennials -- which it defined as those who were born after 1980 and came of age around the millennium -- are not affiliated with any faith tradition, Pew found. They characterize their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular."
That compares to fewer than one in five Generation Xers -- Americans born from 1965 to 1980 -- who were unaffiliated with a religion when they were in their late teens and early 20s.
Just 13 percent of American baby boomers -- those born from 1946 to 1964 -- were unaffiliated with any religious tradition when they were young adults, according to Pew.
But when it comes to many beliefs and practices -- like views about life after death, the existence of heaven and hell and miracles -- millennials resemble previous generations of young Americans. ...
Move over, Millennials. You're not the younger generation anymore.
For the past decade, you were the ones to watch. But now, as the eldest among you are fast approaching 30, there's a new group just begging for some attention. They're still kids, and although there's a lot the experts don't yet know about them, one thing they do agree on is that what kids use and expect from their world has changed rapidly.
And it's all because of technology.
"It's simply a part of their DNA," says Dave Verhaagen, a child and adolescent psychologist in Charlotte. "It shapes everything about them."
To the psychologists, sociologists, and generational and media experts who study them, their digital gear sets this new group (yet unnamed by any powers that be) apart, even from their tech-savvy Millennial elders. They want to be constantly connected and available in a way even their older siblings don't quite get. These differences may appear slight, but they signal an all-encompassing sensibility that some say marks the dawning of a new generation.
"The current generation seems to be moving well into adulthood, and there seems to be another generation setting itself up as a contrast to it," says Neil Howe, a historian and demographer who has co-written several books on the generations. ...
Social networking has risen among all age groups in the past few years, particularly among teens and younger adults, according to research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Pew research indicates that in 2009, 73% of online teens used social networking sites in 2009, compared to 47% of online adults. Breaking down online adults into older and younger demographics, 72% of adults 18-29 use social networking sites, compared to 40% of their counterparts 30 and older.
Facebook is Tops with All Adults
Social networking adults in all age brackets favor Facebook by a wide margin, with older adults preferring it slightly more. Seventy-three percent of all adults 18 and older who use social networking sites have a Facebook account. Broken down by age demographic, this includes 71% of adults 18-29 and 75% of adults 30 and older. ...
They were the Baby Boomers who didn’t make it to Woodstock — because it would have taken them way past their bedtimes.
While much has been made about the heritage of the Baby Boomers, who fomented the hippie counterculture and burned down draft boards, there is actually a larger segment of this cohort — their younger siblings — who more or less missed the 1960s and came of age in the following decade.
And they even have a strange name, these later baby boomers, born between the years 1954 and 1965 — “Generation Jones.” I recently came across a reference to Generation Jones as part of a recent IBM survey on consumer attitudes, and found the differences between them and Baby Boomers compelling.
Jonathan Pontell, who coined the term for this 53 million-member-strong generational segment, describes this generation as stuck “between Woodstock and Lollapalooza.” They didn’t buy into or were too young to understand the Baby Boomer tantrums; yet they were a tad to old to join the Gen-Xers in the mosh pits. Pontell describes their heritage:
So who are we? We are practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part. The name “Generation Jones” derives from a number of sources, including our historical anonymity, the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ competition of our populous birth years, and sensibilities coupling the mainstream with ironic cool. But above all, the name borrows from the slang term ‘jonesin” that we as teens popularized to broadly convey any intense craving.”
President Obama and Michelle Obama are members of Generation Jones. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is also a member. So is Sarah Palin and Simon Cowell. ...
Well, I was born smack-dab in the middle of this generation. Guess you can call me Jonesy now. :-)
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day a year after the first African-American president took office, Americans appear to have mixed views about the impact of President Obama's election on race relations.
For civil rights activist Si Kahn, the evolution in racial relations in America can be summed up by a visit to Mert’s Restaurant in downtown Charlotte, N.C. A nouvelle soul food place where you can dine to the sound of sweet Southern gut-bucket blues, the restaurant is packed these days with “a wonderful mix" of young people, he says.
“So many shades, shapes, sizes, facial characteristics, languages, accents,” he continues, “Across lines of race and ethnicity, they hold hands, embrace, kiss.”
Though President Obama has been in office for just a year, “a tiny blip in time for an entire culture to evolve, Mr. Kahn sees noticeable changes in American race relations. Racism among young people especially, he says, continues to fade.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a year after the inauguration of America’s first black president, historians and civil rights activists offer mixed assessments about Mr. Obama's impact on race relations in the country. Some like Mr. Kahn are overwhelmingly positive. But others say there’s still a long way to go.
The mixed assessments show up in several surveys and polls. A recent Pew Research survey found a dramatic increase in how black Americans felt about their place in society. Four out of 10 black Americans say they are better off now compared with 2007, when only two in ten felt that way.
But a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday shows a decline in the number of Americans who say Obama’s presidency will help race relations, from 60 percent on the eve of his inauguration last year to about 40 percent today. The fall is highest among African-Americans. Three-quarters of blacks said they expected Obama’s presidency to advance racial equality last January, but only 51 percent of blacks now say he has helped.
“It is pure fantasy to think that the election of the first African-American President is going to change [racial inequality] overnight,” says Yolanda T. Moses, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. ...
More than one in 10 US parents with grown children say at least one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year after living away, according to research by the Pew Research Center, which found that the recent recession has created a bumper crop of “boomerangers,” particularly between ages 18 and 34.
To measure changes in household arrangements, the survey asked US adults if they lived in their own home or with one or both parents in the parents’ home. The survey further asked all adults if they had moved back in with their parents as a result of the recession. Overall, about 11% of all adults ages 18+ live with their parents in their home and 4% of all adults say they were forced to move back with their parents because of the recession, a proportion that rises to 10% among those ages 18 - 34. ...
Twenty-somethings are coping with the recession by reining in spending and growing more risk-averse, setting the stage for lifelong behaviors.
Like many of us, Ashley Frerich of Marshall, Minn., scaled back this Christmas, setting a dollar limit for presents and buying everything on sale. But several studies have shown this super-sized recession will affect young people long after the holiday season fades and the new year begins.
Four in 10 workers in their twenties and thirties are more conservative because of the recession, a recent study from Fidelity Investments found. In a paper published last year, Stanford Prof. Stefan Nagel and University of California, Berkeley, Prof. Ulrike Malmendier explained that the economic environments people experience in early adulthood influences their lifelong investing behaviors. They found Generation Y will likely invest less in stocks and take fewer financial risks because they experienced a major recession as young adults.
In the past, 20-somethings were the group most likely to be investing 100 percent in stocks because they're young and their time horizon is long. I'm sure some are still invested this way. But one big, fat stock market downturn later, and young people are singing a different tune, even though the market has rebounded nicely. ...
New cultural attitudes, the expanding role of technology and the current economic climate are narrowing the generation gap and drawing today’s American families closer together, changing how parents raise and regard their children compared with how their parents raised them, according to a recent study commissioned by Nickelodeon and conducted by Harris Interactive.
The study, entitled “The Family GPS,” found that - as Millennials become parents and Baby Boomers become grandparents - today’s increasingly multi-generational and diverse American families are rapidly becoming united by an expanding set of values and converging tastes.
Generation Gap Ends, Family Fusion Begins
Today’s families are increasingly multi-generational - with kids, parents and grandparents living together in one household or in close proximity - and closer knit, often sharing the same interests and tastes. As a result, the study found that it is a top priority to seek and create opportunities to spend more time together, preferably in the home, which serves as the main hub for free time as well as family life.
Both groups benefit in reverse-mentoring programs.
Janet Cabot couldn't wait to show Ashley Spohn her latest accomplishment.
"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.
"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"
Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.
Many organizations eager to strengthen their presence in the online world have discovered that they have the perfect consultants on their staffs: 20-somethings who live in that world.
"We grew up with social media," said Matthew Clay, 23, a media executive at Edelman. "We spent eight hours every day on AOL IM."
The baby boomer executives who might have scolded these young people for that if they had been their parents are now turning to them for help. A survey for the Center for Work-Life Policy found that 40 percent of respondents had asked younger colleagues for help with text messaging, social networking and using iTunes.
In formal programs or informal sit-downs, companies are assigning junior staff members to serve as social media guides for their senior ones. ...
I am a proud, flag-waving member of Generation X, the latchkey kids born between the early 1960s and late 1970s who listened to grunge music while worrying that we'd never make as much money as our parents. My children, 4 and 6, are part of the emerging Generation Z, a demographic too young to be stereotyped.
In between are the mysterious creatures known as Generation Y. Born between the late 1970s and late 1990s, these so-called "millenials" intrigue me. As the first generation raised on the Internet, I suspect that they offer a glimpse into our future.
They are more comfortable with technology than any other generation, they live at a faster pace, and yet they are more distracted. They mature slower, marry later, but use social networks to build large groups of friends. They have more choice and opportunity, and also more stress and anxiety as a result. ...
...According to Yarrow, Generation Y has embraced shopping to a degree that leaves the mall rats of my youth in their dust. According to her research, the average member of Generation Y visits the mall four times a month and stays more than 90 minutes each time, compared with all shoppers who average three visits and 70 minutes. And not surprisingly, they have embraced online shopping, especially using social networking to get advice from friends about what to buy, to a greater degree than older generations.
But here's the statistic that really floored me: Gen Y shoppers spend five times more than their parents did at the same age, and that's after adjusting for inflation. Five times!
"Generation Y is changing retail in a way we haven't seen before," Yarrow said. "I was naive when I started this. They have much more power than I thought."
To a much greater degree than when I was growing up, stores are now social locations for teens and young adults, Yarrow explained. Gen Y comes to the mall to hang out, play and connect with their peers.
And retailers have responded by transforming their stores into clublike refuges. ...
... It's not just the amount of shopping by this generation that's unique, but the reasons behind it. Yarrow found that buying stuff is the way Generation Y has learned to express itself. It's not necessarily about accumulating large amounts of stuff, or declaring your financial status as was the case with the buying habits of baby boomers.
Rather, shopping is a new form of self-expression. "Stuff is a natural, easy way to say who you are," Yarrow said. ...
... For Gen Y, it's not about the price, it's about buying different things to tell the world who you are and how you're feeling, Yarrow said. ...
Earlier this year, I was at a conference on financial giving in the Church. One of the topics covered was generational differences in giving. With G.I. and Silent generations (born before the end of WWII), it is about loyalty and duty. For Boomers, it tends to be more a vision and control. For Gen X, it's about giving to what works ... show me the results. They were unclear as to what does/will motivate Gen Y (or the Millennials). From my reading and observation, I think the motivation is about identity. You give to make a statement about yourself and to find solidarity with a community you want to be identified with. I found the last two quotes interesting in that regard.
But what I find particularly interesting is the consumerism. Isn't this the generation lecturing me (a trailing edge Boomer) about consumerism and how I'm destroying the planet because of it? :-)
... However, despite these similarities, the Barna studies show that the youngest generations are charting a new, unique course related to the Bible. Here are the types of changes being forged by young adults:
Less Sacred – While most Americans of all ages identify the Bible as sacred, the drop-off among the youngest adults is striking: 9 out of 10 Boomers and Elders described the Bible as sacred, which compares to 8 out of 10 Busters (81%) and just 2 out of 3 Mosaics (67%).
Less Accurate – Young adults are significantly less likely than older adults to strongly agree that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. Just 30% of Mosaics and 39% of Busters firmly embraced this view, compared with 46% of Boomers and 58% of Elders.
More Universalism – Among Mosaics, a majority (56%) believes the Bible teaches the same spiritual truths as other sacred texts, which compares with 4 out of 10 Busters and Boomers, and one-third of Elders.
Skepticism of Origins – Another generational difference is that young adults are more likely to express skepticism about the original manuscripts of the Bible than is true of older adults.
Less Engagement – While many young adults are active users of the Bible, the pattern shows a clear generational drop-off – the younger the person, the less likely then are to read the Bible. In particular, Busters and Mosaics are less likely than average to have spent time alone in the last week praying and reading the Bible for at least 15 minutes. Interestingly, none of the four generations were particularly likely to say they aspired to read the Bible more as a means of improving their spiritual lives.
Bible Appetite – Despite the generational decline in many Bible metrics, one departure from the typical pattern is the fact that younger adults, especially Mosaics (19%), express a slightly above-average interest in gaining additional Bible knowledge. This compares with 12% of Boomers and 9% of Elders. ...
Hehehe. This one isn't hard to explain. The fifty-somethings are working to care for those happy older folks while trying to get those happy young adults through college and established in life. Meanwhile, they must put up with those idealistic oldster Boomers and those young idealistic Gen Yers who want to spend the country into oblivion. :-)
Reared on self-esteem and impervious to guilt, the next generation needs good news that can break through their defenses.
The first step a young man takes toward a woman who he thinks might be his future is delicate. The operative words seem to be "sensitive" and "careful" and "first impressions matter." As in love, so in "gospeling" (or evangelism). When Peter preached at Pentecost, he opened his sermon with a time-honored citation of Scripture and then sketched, in third person, what had happened to Jesus. Only then did he zero in on his audience: "and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death" (Acts 2:23). When Paul got behind the dais on the Areopagus, he opened with one of the most seeker-sensitive sermons in history: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious" (17:22). With that opening Paul paved a way to warn the Greeks of the coming judgment. These examples show that biblical evangelism is marked by both boldness and sensitivity to audience.
Teaching twenty-somethings for nearly 15 years has made me acutely aware of a significant trend. It has everything to do with what to assume when it comes to evangelism.
Emerging adults (those between 18 and 30) form a generation that is largely insensitive to the potency of God's holiness, and are therefore insensitive to the magnificence of his grace, the shocking nature of his love, and that gratitude forms the core of the Christian life. Some today complain about these matters. But I doubt very much that ramping up moral exhortations and warning about an endless hell are the proper places to begin with emerging adults. Paul was sensitive to his audience; we need to be as well....
The next time you see a member of Generation Y, show some appreciation.
In Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail, Kit Yarrow and Jayne O'Donnell say today's teens, tweens and twentysomethings "were the least likely to cut back spending after the onset of the 2008 recession."
What's more, Yarrow (a consumer researcher and chair of the Golden Gate University psychology department) and O'Donnell (USA TODAY's retail reporter) say the 84 million Generation Yers born from 1978 through 2000 are so influential they've changed shopping for all consumers. They call Gen Y "the taste-makers, influencers, and most enthusiastic buyers of today," who will become "the mature, high-income purchasers of the future."
Because of Gen Y, we have:
More creative, technically advanced websites (50% of retailers redesigned their sites last year).
A wide availability of online customer reviews (Gen Y writes half of them).
A faster stream of product introductions (Gen Y gets bored fast).
Bigger, more comfortable dressing rooms (Gen Yers like to bring in friends to review outfits).
Generalizing about any group this size is risky. ...
Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991.
For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
Rap music has always been main stream.
Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
Someone has always been building something taller than the Willis (née Sears) Tower in Chicago.
The KGB has never officially existed.
Text has always been hyper.
They never saw the "Scud Stud" (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders.)
Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
They have never had to "shake down" an oral thermometer.
Bungee jumping has always been socially acceptable.
They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P.
American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled.
State abbreviations in addresses have never had periods.
The European Union has always existed.
McDonald's has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
Condoms have always been advertised on television.
Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap.
The American health care system has always been in critical condition.
Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves.
Desperate smokers have always been able to turn to Nicoderm skin patches.
There has always been a Cartoon Network.
The nation's key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Their folks could always reach for a Zoloft.
They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
Women have always outnumbered men in college.
We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code.
Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
It's always been official: President Zachary Taylor did not die of arsenic poisoning.
Madonna's perspective on Sex has always been well documented.
Phil Jackson has always been coaching championship basketball.
Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
Kevin Costner has always been Dancing with Wolves, especially on cable.
There have always been flat screen televisions.
They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix.
Disney's Fantasia has always been available on video, and It's a Wonderful Life has always been on Moscow television.
Smokers have never been promoted as an economic force that deserves respect.
Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
Nobody has been able to make a deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
They have never been Saved by the Bell
Someone has always been asking: "Was Iraq worth a war?"
Most communities have always had a mega-church.
Natalie Cole has always been singing with her father.
The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.
Elizabeth Taylor has always reeked of White Diamonds.
There has always been a Planet Hollywood.
For one reason or another, California's future has always been in doubt.
Agent Starling has always feared the Silence of the Lambs.
"Womyn" and "waitperson" have always been in the dictionary.
Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
CDs have never been sold in cardboard packaging.
Avon has always been "calling" in a catalog.
NATO has always been looking for a role.
Two Koreas have always been members of the UN.
Official racial classifications in South Africa have always been outlawed.
The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
Vice presidents of the United States have always had real power.
Conflict in Northern Ireland has always been slowly winding down.
Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them.
Nobody has ever responded to "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up."
Congress could never give itself a mid-term raise.
Popular wisdom suggests many young people and their Baby Boomer parents get along great — unlike many Boomers and their own parents did back in the '60s and '70s. So does that mean the generations see eye to eye?
Not at all. But they aren't fighting about it like they used to. Forty years after Woodstock, the generation gap has mellowed.
A survey out today from the Pew Research Center finds two-thirds of Americans 16 and older see an age divide in every one of the eight areas listed. Among the biggest gaps: ...
The balance of power between old-school managers and young talent is changing—a bit.
THEIR defenders say they are motivated, versatile workers who are just what companies need in these difficult times. To others, however, the members of “Generation Y”—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as Millennials or the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic layabouts who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all that messing around online proves that we are computer-literate multitaskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month’s sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals.
This culture clash has been going on in many organisations and has lately seeped into management books. The Net Geners have grown up with computers; they are brimming with self-confidence; and they have been encouraged to challenge received wisdom, to find their own solutions to problems and to treat work as a route to personal fulfilment rather than merely a way of putting food on the table. Not all of this makes them easy to manage. Bosses complain that after a childhood of being coddled and praised, Net Geners demand far more frequent feedback and an over-precise set of objectives on the path to promotion (rather like the missions that must be completed in a video game). In a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees. ...
WASHINGTON -- Baby Boomers have pumped up the global economy with their profligate ways for nearly two decades. It's been a great party. Now the music's over.
Generalizations about the 79 million people born between 1946 and 1964 are overdone and easy to debunk. Boomers went to Woodstock, voted for George McGovern and, so the thinking goes, cared deeply about the Rolling Stones. Boomers also helped put Ronald Reagan and fellow Boomer George W. Bush in the White House and turned Nashville into a cultural capital.
But what Baby Boomers of all persuasions have done, without dispute and to an unprecedented degree, is spend money instead of saving it. During the 1990s, Baby Boomers accounted for about half of all consumer spending in the U.S., according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute study. ...
...Baby Boomers are rounding into the final laps of their careers largely untested and unprepared for what could be the worst economic crisis in their lifetimes. The sluggish 1970s and early 1980s overshadowed the college years and early work lives of the bulk of the Boom generation. But with a few mild hiccups, it's been easy riding since then.
Until now. Some economists and demographers say the Baby Boomers themselves are driving the current turmoil. As Boomers send their kids out into the world, they are entering the phase of life when income starts to fall, spending slows and houses get sold. The same generational heft that Boomers used to create fads for hula hoops, sport-utility vehicles and Harleys will now work against them as all of them rush to cash out and slow down at once. That puts more houses up for sale to far fewer buyers: a younger generation that is also less able to afford them. ...
You're being played for chumps. Barack Obama and John McCain want your votes, but they're ignoring your interests. You face a heavily mortgaged future. You'll pay Social Security and Medicare for aging baby boomers. The needed federal tax increase might total 50 percent over the next 25 years. Pension and health costs for state and local workers have doubtlessly been underestimated. There's the expense of decaying infrastructure -- roads, bridges, water pipes. All this will squeeze other crucial government services: education, defense, police.
You're not hearing much of this in the campaign. One reason, frankly, is that you don't seem to care. Obama's your favorite candidate (by 64 percent to 33 percent among 18- to 29-year-olds, according to the latest Post-ABC News poll). But he's outsourced his position on these issues to AARP, the 40 million-member group for Americans 50 and over. ...
A charity that provides water to African villages posts locations of new wells using Google Earth, and a 13-year-old contributor in Manhattan tracks the progress.
A cancer charity accepts "micro-donations" of $5 by text message.
An orchestra in Michigan begins posting videos of its performances on YouTube to try to draw patrons.
The United States long has been a nation of givers, but a new generation is transforming the way we do good. Millennials and Generation Xers, especially those 20- and 30-somethings starting careers, may not have the bucks to be major donors, but they are finding ways to help others and prompting big changes in the way charities raise money. ...
...But one area where NBC may have lost: The teen demographic. Only 46 percent of teens surveyed by Harris Interactive showed any interest in watching the Olympics. And if teens are indeed abstaining, it's not because they think that the Olympics are a crass, greedy commercial enterprise -- in fact, 71 percent of those polled "were likely to agree that the games are about more than merely medals and marketing," according to Harris Interactive. So why won't they watch? Because it's not convenient for them.
"Teens want quick-hitting videos," says Bill Carter, a partner at youth marketing agency Fuse Marketing. "They don't want the lead-up and they don't want the analysis. They just want the video. ...
The baby boomers -- that prominent group of middle-agers whose massive numbers invite never-ending dissection and speculation -- have once again spoken. What they have said is, " Waaaaaahhh."
This is according to a social and demographic trends survey released recently by the Pew Research Center. The survey measured the pessimism, dissatisfaction and general curmudgeonliness of 2,413 adults in various generations.
The results validate any member of the Greatest Generation who ever looked at his or her offspring and sadly thought, "soft." Simply put, boomers are a bunch of . . . whiners. ...
...A recent University of Chicago sociology study compared the results of happiness surveys going back more than 30 years and found that boomers have never been happy. In 2004, 28 percent of respondents born in 1950 considered themselves "very happy," compared with 40.2 percent of those born in 1935. Back in 1972, the figures for those same generations were 28.9 and 35.4....
...It's a cyclical downer that follows many generations born after times of crisis, says Neil Howe, an author who gained fame for his theories of recurrent generational behavior. It plagued the Transcendental generation, born on the heels of American independence, and the Missionary generation that arrived after the Civil War.
"People born in times of cultural renewal tend to take an overt attitude of pessimism," Howe says.
They see their pessimism as a tonic that will wake up the world, then they just end up drunk on disappointment. ...
This article assigns those born 1946-1964 to the Baby Boom Generation, which is accurate from a fertility statistics viewpoint. It marks the years when we had emerged to the norm from a birth dearth to a point where we had descended to the norm from a fertility high. However, I think from a sociological standpoint, Neil Howe is right in assigning the years 1943-1960. These are the years closer to where the actual upturn (1943) and downturn (1960) began, thus also signaling that something had changed how we viewed having children and how they should be raised.
I also like Howe's definition because it places me at the very trailing end of Boomer nation. I prefer to be as close to the outside of it as possible. :) Wait ... does that mean I'm whining too?
