"Bolstered by immigrants, the echo-boom generation is already larger than the baby-boom generation--and the
baby-bust generation [born 1966-1985] is nearly as large," reports Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
At the same time, she projects a weakness in the single-family market as over the next eight years, this large number of baby boomers seeks to sell these assets to a "
baby-bust."
As the
baby-bust generation matured in the 1990s, there were fewer workers competing to fill slots on organizational charts, yet organizations failed to reengineer themselves and went on hiring as many slot-fillers as they could.
The impacts of the change from baby-boom to
baby-bust on population growth have been softened by the effects of immigration.
The following prediction, quoted from a popular lousiness magazine in 1979, is typical: "Over the next 25 years [the
baby-bust generation] will enjoy better entry-level jobs, higher relative income, and faster promotions because of sparser numbers."(2)
Advocates of the plan to invest a portion of the Social Security fund in the stock market emphasized that this would be more equitable to the "
baby-bust" generation, because its taxes wouldn't have to be so high in the future to pay for all us greedy, selfish boomers.
The first is the different sizes of the baby-boom,
baby-bust, and baby boomlet generations moving through the life cycle.
The effect is not large, however: the swing from the baby-boom teens of 1980 to the
baby-bust teens of 2,000 will, in her estimate, raise the college attendance rate only from 50% to 53%.
Relative income flattened out for young men and women in the second half of the 1980s, as the small current generation of youth the
baby-bust generation) replaced the baby-boom generation, although reduced demand for lower-skilled workers apparently prevented a reversal of the earlier decline.
The slippage Jackson refers to is a gloomy demographic trend called the
baby-bust phase, named for the generation of young adults now entering the market in shrinking numbers contrasted by the baby boomer horde that preceded them.
This is part two of a series examining how immigration and the
baby-bust generation are changing the nature of housing demand in America.
Remember a few years back when it looked like housing would plummet in the 1990s as the
baby-bust generation matured and household formation declined?