The Puzzle of Generational Politics
Age is a big deal. We saw just how big a deal it is from the deterioration of President Biden evident during the recent debate with Donald Trump. There’s a growing sense that the world is being run by a gerontocracy—Biden, Trump, Putin, Xi, Khamenei—worthy of the decrepit and corrupt Emperor Tiberius.
The stage is being set for a global generational conflict. As the old men strut on the world stage, they have left the next generation an almost unfathomable $91 trillion debt load, essentially forcing higher interest rates along with the threat of higher taxes and service cuts. Even in authoritarian countries, the younger generations are getting increasingly restless. And in the West, fewer than 10 percent of Americans under thirty think the country is headed in a good direction.
In most leading countries—the US, China, Japan, the UK, and the EU—a clear and widening divide has opened up between the different age cohorts that will alter our politics, arts, culture, and social norms in the decades ahead. This process is being propelled by demographic shifts unprecedented in modern history. For the better part of a half-century, populations have been expanding and getting richer. Now, we live in an era of flat and even negative population growth, and a shrinking middle class in virtually every middle- and high-income country.
The Long Tail of the Boomers
The younger cohorts inhabit a world in which the Boomer generation hoards wealth and power. This cannot last indefinitely. As usual, the first signs of this conflict come from the arts, in movies like Japan’s Plan 75, which envisions a government programme that urges people over 75 to commit a pleasant suicide for the benefit of future generations.
There are many reasons to want to get rid of the Boomers—my own generation. An aging population requires a working generation that can help foot a nation’s bills and support the elderly. We Boomers were able to do that for our parents, but younger people today may lack the resources. In the United States, fewer than 50 percent of Millennials are doing better than their parents. This is not just an American phenomenon. In almost every high-income country, Pew has found that the vast majority of parents—82 percent in Japan and 72 percent in the US—are pessimistic about the financial future of their offspring.
Compared with their parents, young people today are more likely to have a future with no substantial assets or property. A Deloitte study projects that Millennials (Americans born 1981–96) will hold barely 16 percent of the nation’s wealth in 2030, when they will be the largest adult generation by far. By then, Generation X (born 1965–80) will hold 31 percent, while the Boomers (born 1946–64) will still control 45 percent.
Boomers have greatly benefited from the economic progress made over the past 50 years. Property-led wealth accumulation has made a fifth of Boomers paper millionaires, something not likely to be repeated in the next generation. Overall, Boomers own half of the $32 trillion in US home equity. Despite a mediocre economy and high interest rates, house prices are at record highs across the US and home equity has soared to a record high of $27.8 trillion, while buyers now come largely from households with already strong credit. In Britain, one-in-four Boomers is a millionaire (in pounds sterling), mainly due to inflated housing prices. British retirees have more income than working-age people, notes a recent Resolution Foundation survey.
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Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Mark Klotz via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
