![]() ![]() ![]() Fifteen percent of Gen Xers said that they identified as Boomers, while a baffled 2 percent of Boomers and 4 percent of Silents thought of themselves as Millennials. ![]() In a somewhat bizarre set of survey data from 2015, 33 percent of Millennials identified as Gen X, and 8 percent said that they were Boomers. Pew Research Center’s own polling reflects the instability of these categories. The Silent Generation, born from 1928 to 1945, was an anomaly, with only 25 percent of survey respondents associating themselves with their label perhaps people are reluctant to embrace the identity of being “silent.” As Louis Menand pointed out in a recent takedown of generational labels in The New Yorker, silent is a preposterous descriptor for Silent luminaries such as Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Nina Simone, and Martin Luther King Jr. ![]() According to a recent YouGov survey of American adults commissioned on behalf of The Atlantic, 74 percent of Boomers associate themselves with their generational label, and the share declines with each successive generation: 53 percent of Gen X, 45 percent of Millennials, and 39 percent of Gen Z said the same. The labels have also gotten progressively less meaningful to each new group they purport to represent. Although this could reflect the sense that social and technological changes are happening more quickly than in the past, another possible explanation, Cohen thinks, is that as marketers and pundits have observed the profits and attention that come with labeling a generation, they scramble to be the first to do so. The average age at which Americans become parents has been rising, meaning that generations have technically been lengthening-and yet, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z span shorter lengths of time than Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation. In a sense, generational labels have gotten even less real in the past few decades. No official body certified these categories and verified the rationale behind them-they just eventually became accepted after getting repeated over and over. As Cohen pointed out in his open letter, the rest have arbitrary parameters and lengths: The Silent Generation was born over a span of 18 years before the end of World War II Millennials entered the world over a span of 16 years from 1981 to 1996. Baby Boomers are the only currently living cohort defined by an actual demographic event-in this case, the postwar baby boom. The social scientists are right: Generational labels are stupid.įirst of all, they are essentially made-up. They flatten out the experiences of tens of millions of very different people, remove nuance from conversations, and imply commonality where there may be none. But these labels are clumsy and imprecise-and getting more so all the time. Generational labels capture some of the basic fact that people who are born in different eras lead meaningfully different lives. The period someone grows up in can shape how, when, and whether they form a family, own a home, pursue higher education, and attain financial stability. Being an 18-year-old in today’s economic and cultural climate is a very different experience than being the same age in 1990 or in 1960. Some 170 social-science researchers signed on to Cohen’s letter, which argued that these labels were arbitrary and counterproductive.Īfter Cohen laid out his arguments in a Washington Post opinion piece, Kim Parker, Pew’s director of social-trends research, issued a response that both acknowledged the “limitations to generational analysis” and noted that “it can be a useful tool for understanding demographic trends and shifting public attitudes.” She told me recently that Pew is now in a “period of reflection” on the merits of using generational labels, during which it is having internal discussions and inviting outside researchers, Cohen among them, to share their perspectives.Ĭohen is not arguing that when you’re born doesn’t matter for your life trajectory. His request: that Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan “fact tank,” “do the right thing” and stop using generational labels such as Gen Z and Baby Boomers in its reports. You know there’s drama in research circles-or at least what qualifies as drama in research circles-when someone writes an open letter.Įarlier this year, that someone was Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland at College Park. ![]()
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