Word: boom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...they most admired, the leading choice was "Nobody." To be sure, the generation has produced a few able young politicians like Senator Gore, but he is still very much a junior Senator in a minority party, hardly a national figure. The presidential aspirants who most openly court the Baby Boom voters--Democrat Gary Hart and Republican Jack Kemp--are 49 and 50 years old, respectively. It would not be surprising if a Baby Boom leader emerged from outside the political realm, but none pops to mind--even if Bruce Springsteen might carry the young blue collar vote...
Demographers somewhat inelegantly refer to the Baby Boom generation as "the pig in the python," a moving bulge that distorts and distends everything around it as it rumbles through the stages of life. Locked together in a crowded race, many Boomers have learned to use their elbows. The most outspoken members retain a kind of generational arrogance epitomized by Stockman's egregious assertion in his newly published memoirs (The Triumph of Politics; Harper & Row) that the so-called Reagan Revolution was in fact not Reagan's: "It was mine...
...Baby Boom, says Richard C. Michel of the Urban Institute, was hit by a quadruple whammy: inflation, fierce competition for jobs, exorbitant housing costs and the recessions of the '70s and early '80s. "They grew up with the expectation that they would live better than their parents no matter what they did," says Michel. "The 1970s ended that. It was a time of tremendous economic disillusionment for many people." Between 1973 and 1983 the median real income of a typical young family headed by a person ages 25 to 34 fell by 11.5%. In the 1970s, for the first time...
Such cocktail-circuit horror stories were accompanied by panicky fears that the American dream of home ownership was becoming illusory. In fact, statistics show that by scraping and borrowing, most Baby Boom families eventually managed to buy at least a modest dwelling. In 1983 nearly half of all young families owned their homes, about the same proportion as a decade earlier. Many a down payment came from parents; Rutgers University Housing Economist George Sternlieb quips that Baby Boomers have popularized a new form of G.I. financing: "G.I. as in Good In-laws...
Though the Baby Boomers have spurred the growth of the black middle class, there are as well an increasing number of unwed black mothers in the Baby Boom generation who must support their children on a pittance. "When you talk about two-parent families," says Frank Levy of the Urban Institute, "blacks have made gains in closing the gap on whites." The median income for a black family headed by a married couple ages 35 to 44 was $29,908 in 1983, not far behind the $35,600 average for whites. But the 43% of black households headed by women...