America'due south babe boomers are in a collective funk. Members of the large generation built-in from 1946 to 1964 are more downbeat about their lives than are adults who are younger or older, co-ordinate to a new Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey.

Boomers See Trouble Ahead ...Not only do boomers give their overall quality of life a lower rating than adults in other generations, they also are more likely to worry that their incomes won't go along up with inflation — this despite the fact that boomers savour the highest incomes of any age group.

More so than those in other generations, boomers believe information technology is harder to become ahead at present than it was ten years ago. And they are less apt than others to say their standard of living exceeds the one their parents had when their parents were the age they are now.

These gloomy assessments come up from a generation that always has been identified with youth (witness the resilience of their label: "baby boomers") just that'due south now well into — and even across — middle age. (Boomers turn 44 to 62 this year.)

However, it is past no means sure that the boomers' current bleak mood is a function of their current stage of life. When it comes to quality-of-life assessments, data suggest the boomers generally have been downbeat, compared with other age groups, for the past two decades — starting dorsum when some were however in their twenties. So their current sour ratings may be related to getting older, just they also may be related to the attitudes and expectations most life they formed when they were young.

The Pew survey was conducted by telephone from January 24 through February nineteen, 2008 among a randomly selected nationally representative sample of 2,413 adults. Baby boomers are defined as adults ages 43-62 at the time the survey was taken.

On a question that asked respondents to rate their present life on a calibration of null to ten, boomers, on average, give their lives a rating of 6.2. In dissimilarity, adults older than boomers (those who are ages 63 and above) give their lives an average rating of half-dozen.seven. Adults younger than boomers (those who are ages 18 to 41) give their lives an average rating of 6.five.

This "quality of life" gap between boomers and non-boomers admittedly is pocket-size. A pattern of gaps, even so, has lasted throughout the 2 decades the Pew Research Center has been asking this question, although in some years the differences are too small to be statistically significant.

Self-Rating of Life Quality

Since 1989 — back when boomers ranged in age from 25 through 43 — their self-rankings have trailed those of adults who are older than them. Every bit for adults who are younger than boomers, the pattern is more mixed. For the past four years, boomers take as well trailed this younger grouping. But in the late 1990s through 2002, boomers gave their lives a slightly improve rating than younger adults gave theirs. A table at the end of this analysis shows the trend in quality of life ratings for each of these age groups since 1989.

Boomers See Tough Times for AllWorried About Money

The latest Pew survey finds that the boomers' glum assessments about their lives overall are matched by relatively high levels of feet most their personal finances. Some 55% say it is likely that their incomes will not go along up with the cost of living over the next year. That majority makes them the exception amid all adults. But four-in-ten younger Americans (44%) or older ones (43%) take that business organisation.

The anomaly here is that boomers are in their peak earning years. As a group, they relish higher median household incomes than do younger or older adults, according to the Demography Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey. Americans ages 45 to 64 — roughly the same age range every bit the boomers — have a median household income of virtually $threescore,000. That compares with about $53,000 for adults ages 25 to 44, and about $30,000 for those ages 65 and older.

In the Pew survey, boomers also are more probable than younger or older adults to own stocks or bonds, and to have retirement accounts.

Fifty-fifty and then, boomers are more than broken-hearted than other Americans that they will accept to cutting household spending in the coming twelvemonth because money is tight. Nearly three-in-ten boomers (28%) say it is very likely they will have to do so, compared with 22% of younger adults and eighteen% of older ones.

Asked most changes in their finances over the past twelvemonth, most boomers (59%) written report they had to spend less considering money was tight, but so exercise nearly younger Americans (58%). By other measures, boomers are less fiscally strained than younger adults. They are less likely (22% to 32%) to say someone in their household had to get to work in the past year or take on an actress chore to brand ends encounter. They are less probable to say they accept had trouble paying for medical care (22% to 29%) or for housing (xiii% to 24%). Boomers as well are less probable than younger adults (13% to nineteen%) to take been laid off in the past twelvemonth. On the other hand, they also are less likely to take received a pay raise (43% to 52%).

Progress in Life — Looking Forrard and Backward

Asked to compare their standard of living with that of their parents at the same age, boomers are more downbeat than younger or older adults. Near four-in-ten (39%) infant boomers say their standard of living is worse, or no better, than that of their parents. That is a higher proportion than among younger adults (32%) or older ones (27%) who say the aforementioned thing.

Boomers are Gloomier

Peering into the futurity, nearly baby boomers exercise not believe their ain children will accept a higher standard of living than they do. Simply 44% of baby boomers believe their sons and daughters will be better off as adults than they are at present. That is about the same proportion as amongst older Americans (41%), but much lower than the 58% of younger Americans who think their children volition fare improve than they take.

Information technology'due south Not Just Me

Younger Boomers More OptimisticInfant boomers are pessimistic not only about their own finances, but also about anybody else'southward. They are more than likely than younger or older Americans to believe that it is harder to make progress, and easier to lose ground, than it was in the by.

Ii-thirds of infant boomers say it is harder for people to get alee now than a decade ago. That is a more downbeat cess than other age groups give. Among younger adults, 55% say it is harder to get ahead. Amongst older adults, 58% say and then.

Looking backward, boomers too believe it is easier to fall behind than it was a decade ago: More three-quarters (76%) say so. On this, they also have bleaker views than other age groups. Two-thirds of younger Americans (67%) say information technology is easier to fall behind, equally do 59% of older Americans.

About Americans say information technology is more difficult for middle class people to maintain their standard of living than information technology was five years ago, but baby boomers are especially probable to believe this. A whopping 86% say it is harder than it used to be to proceed upwardly a middle class lifestyle, compared with 77% of younger people and 73% of older ones.

Are Older Boomers Unlike From Younger Ones?

The baby boom generation is not monolithic. Ane way that economists and then
cial scientists wait at its differences is to compare younger boomers, ages 43-52, with older ones, ages 53-62. In full general, younger boomers are more optimistic.

To some extent, these differences within the baby blast generation reflect a broader age design in the survey. Younger people are more likely than older ones to say they have moved upward the ladder of life in recent years, or to predict that they will in the about future. Simply, in one more than measure of their gloominess, boomers are as likely as adults who are older than they are to say they accept slipped on the ladder of life; a third say so.

Asked to rank their quality of life on a nada to ten scale, boomers divide themselves fairly evenly among low (0-five), medium (6-7) and high (8-x) ratings. There is niggling difference between older and younger boomers in current rankings on the so-called ladder of life.

Simply among younger boomers, four-in-x (42%) say they have made progress over the past five years. Among older boomers, merely three-in-ten (31%) say they take. Older boomers are more than likely than younger ones to say they have not budged (34% to 23%). About a third of both groups say they have slipped downwards the ladder.

Asked where they await to stand on the ladder of life in five years, nigh younger boomers (60%) predict they volition be on i of the highest rungs. Only 34% of older boomers say so. Looked at some other mode, sixty% of younger boomers believe they will move up the ladder of life over the next five years, compared with 34% of older boomers who recollect so. Older boomers are more likely than younger ones to say they will exist in the same place (36% to 21%) or to predict they will take moved down (20% to 10%).

Why So Glum?

In the terminate, these survey data do not say definitively why baby boomers are sour compared with other adults, only these numbers and other research suggest some possibilities. Seven-in-ten boomers say they are dissatisfied with the direction in which the country is going, which is considerably higher than the share of younger adults who say and then (54%) and about the aforementioned as the share of older adults who practice (68%). They are more than likely than either younger or older adults to agree with the statement that the rich merely get richer these days while the poor get poorer.

Intriguingly, younger boomers ally themselves with Americans ages 20-27– the and then-called "Generation Next"– in their tendency to assert that success in life is determined mainly by exterior forces. About four-in-x say so. Among older boomers and other historic period groups, only well-nigh three-in-ten say then.

Demographically speaking, this is a generation at the peak of its earning power, but with a lot on its plate. Virtually boomers have children to worry most, and near have at least one living parent. Three-quarters are homeowners, at a time when home values are stagnant and the mortgage crunch is heating up. Boomers are edging toward retirement, which potentially means living on a fixed income. Overall, 17% already are retired, but that proportion rises to 31% among older boomers.

Too, some baby boomers may exist feeling financially stretched because they discover themselves in a "sandwich" phase of life — supporting children or aging parents, or sometimes both. A 2005 Pew Inquiry Heart survey found that half of all boomers were raising one or more immature children and/or providing primary fiscal support to one or more than adult children. Another 17%, who were parents of children eighteen and older, provided some financial support to at least ane adult child. An additional two-in-ten were providing some financial assistance to a parent.

Quality of Life

Looking into their financial futures, just 26% of the baby boomers said then that they expected to live very comfortably in retirement. That was a lower per centum than either younger people (37%) or older ones (33%), many of whom already are retired.

On the other hand, another theory is offered by Academy of Chicago sociologist Yang Yang, who suggests that the huge size of the baby boom generation — 76 million — created more than competition for schooling and jobs than smaller generations encountered. This competition, and so the theory goes, creates stress. In a recently published research paper,1 she proposed the theory to explain why iii decades of information from the General Social Survey indicate that boomers have experienced less happiness on average during their lives than younger or older adults.

Information technology's likewise possible that the seeds of the boomers' discontent were planted long ago — dorsum when they were young and their generation reveled in the culture of youth. Boomers are a big, complicated generation, merely one affair tin be said about them without fear of contradiction: They are no longer young.