TOO often discussion of generations descends into stereotypes and manufactured conflicts 鈥� avocado-obsessed, narcissistic millennials against selfish, wasteful baby boomers. Instead of听serious analysis, we get apocryphal predictions about millennials 鈥渒illing鈥� everything from to the .
Such discourse wouldn鈥檛 be so worrisome if it didn鈥檛 sully genuine research into generational differences, a powerful tool to understand and anticipate societal shifts. They can provide unique and often surprising insights into how societies and individuals develop and change.
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That is because generational changes are like tides: powerful, slow-moving and relatively predictable. Once a generation is set on a course, it tends to continue, which helps us see likely futures. That is true even through severe shocks like war or pandemic, which tend to accentuate and accelerate trends. Existing vulnerabilities are ruthlessly exposed, and we are pushed further and faster down paths we were already on.
We tend to settle into our value systems and behaviours during late childhood and early adulthood, so generation-shaping events have a stronger impact on people who experience them while coming of age. This is why it is vitally important to heed the lessons we learn by looking at previous generations so we can understand what the covid-19 pandemic will mean for those growing up through it, and use those insights to help Generation Covid meet the unprecedented challenges ahead.
Some approaches that define swathes of the population purely on when people were born are closer to astrology than serious analysis. The type of generational analysis I use in my new book, , however, is built on the fact that there are three big forces acting on us that shape our attitudes and behaviours: when we were born (cohort effects), how old we are (life cycle effects) and the impact of events (period effects).
A careful reading of past generational trends means that we can make informed projections about how Generation Covid will be affected by the pandemic 鈥� while recognising that they will change as they age and future events will shape them further.
For instance, health impact of the second world war show that those living in war-affected countries were more likely to later develop depression and diabetes and less likely to report their own health as good than those in countries that escaped the conflict. In the UK, the centralised state the war helped galvanise created the context in which the welfare state and National 午夜福利1000集合 Service were established. They were expressly designed to mitigate the 鈥溾�� 鈥� want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, in the vernacular of the day 鈥� that the war had exposed and exacerbated.
The context of the pandemic is very different, but it is just as important to understand the trajectories we were already on to anticipate covid-19鈥檚 impact and how we should respond.
1 Jobs and income
We have already seen an end to the generation-on-generation economic progress seen in Western countries since the second world war. The Resolution Foundation think tank in the UK analysed personal incomes across the US, UK, Spain, Italy, Norway, Finland and Denmark, dating back to 1969, when the oldest baby boomer was 24 years old (see 鈥淲hat generation do you belong to?鈥�). These show a . Baby boomers had higher incomes in middle age compared with the pre-war generation. Generation X鈥檚 income stalled as they ran into the aftershocks of the 2008 recession 鈥� but it was millennials, who were entering the job market as the crisis hit, who bore the brunt: their real disposable income shrank below that of Generation X. Economic progress didn鈥檛 just stop, it reversed.
Many people have been watching this shift nervously. A new survey produced by my team at the Policy Institute at King鈥檚 College London and New Scientist indicates that nearly half of people in the UK think today鈥檚 youth will have a worse life than their parents.
The timing of the new economic shock from the pandemic is particularly cruel on people below the age of 30: of them across the 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development stopped working entirely; those in work saw their hours cut by 23 per cent on average, far more than older generations.
Some commentators hope for a quick bounce back driven by pent-up demand and government stimulus packages. But we should be wary that these early signs represent a true shift in prospects.
There is a lot of ground to make up from decades of stagnation, and calls will grow for borrowed money to be paid back 鈥� with younger generations footing much of the bill. We may also have to contend with can leave: even if growth is recovered, without action to counter scarring, progress can be lost for good, for countries and for individuals, particularly the young, who live with the scars for longer.
2 Wealth and housing
For Generation Covid, the prospects of being able to accumulate wealth or own a home look dire. Wealth is already generationally skewed: the vast majority of new wealth created in countries like and has gone to older age groups.
This gap is largely due to rocketing house prices and plummeting rates of home ownership among the young. Back in 1984, when the average UK baby boomer was in their late 20s, . But by 2016, when the average millennial was that age, only 37 per cent owned homes.
At the start of the pandemic, there were fears the crisis would . But that ignores a generation-defining reality: that governments in countries like the UK will do almost anything to avoid significant house price falls, given how central they now are to economic sentiment among a core segment of the electorate.
In the UK, the recent stamp duty holiday is a good example of this. We can鈥檛, therefore, count on a price correction to open up ownership to generations who are currently locked out. People largely seem aware of this: in our survey, at least two-thirds of respondents from all generations thought it unlikely that home ownership will become more accessible for young people after covid-19.
Without significant intervention from governments, inequality will get worse, Generation Covid will set new lows of home ownership and face the knock-on effects this brings: lower wealth, less security and rental housing costs that take a much greater proportion of their income.
3 Education
These housing prospects are a clear illustration of one of our biggest societal challenges 鈥� how future inequalities between generations become 鈥渂aked in鈥� as they are handed down in an incipient caste system.
This reaches way beyond the 鈥溾�� providing deposits and mortgage guarantees: it has also been seen in the impact on Generation Covid鈥檚 education during the pandemic. In the first lockdown in the UK, for example, in private school attended full, virtual school days, compared with just 38 per cent in state schools.
The projections for the future impact of such lost learning are frightening. By the time the pandemic is over, most children across the UK will have missed more than half a year of conventional, in-person schooling. That is show that, in high-income countries, earnings by 8 per cent. According to the , just in the UK this equates to 拢350 billion in lost lifetime earnings across the 8.7 million children of school age at the time.
Wealthy, well-educated parents are better able to support learning and . Long-term negative effects are most likely to be concentrated among people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and we know it. In our survey, three-quarters of respondents across generations said they expect inequality to grow in the years ahead. All of which means that how we support Generation Covid isn鈥檛 just about helping the children themselves, but shaping our collective future.
4 Mental health
The repeated pattern of the pandemic accelerating existing trends is also seen with mental health. Between 2000 and 2019, 18 to 24-year-olds went from being the least to most likely age group to have common conditions such as and depression. Covid-19 turbocharged this trend. More than one-in-three people aged 45 and under reported having a mental health condition in January 2021, with the highest incidence, at 40 per cent, among 18 to 21-year-olds.
Of course, lockdowns didn鈥檛 affect all young people in the same way. in stress and anxiety among teens during lockdowns and larger benefits for groups such as those with . But as normal school-life returns, any respite will be outweighed by the generation-on-generation increases in mental health conditions.
There are also implications for this generation鈥檚 job prospects. A report by the Resolution Foundation found that young people who had experienced mental health issues after the 2008 financial crisis were . Increasing the mental health support for Generation Covid is an essential investment that will benefit society as a whole.
5 Birth rates
The crisis may have societal repercussions much further in the future, in accelerating the decline in birth rates and our inexorable drift towards increasingly ageing populations.
Some people predicted early on in the pandemic that , but this was based on a misconception that events that leave people stuck at home, such as blackouts or blizzards, result in more babies. In reality, anxiety in crises generally outweighs boredom of being at home, according to the data. Covid-19 is, it seems, more likely to accentuate the 鈥渂aby bust鈥� that is already under way. A 2020 report from the non-profit organisation the Brookings Institution drew on trends from previous recessions and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic to in the US in 2021, a loss of up to 14 per cent of all births.
Evidence from past pandemics and other disasters like hurricanes shows that . But there are reasons to think it may be different with covid-19, mainly because of the long duration of its disruption to life and the economy. A protracted period of social separation and the potentially even longer-lasting economic scarring will mean not just a delay, but a permanent loss that could have long-term repercussions for Western countries, adding to Generation Covid鈥檚 coming struggle to support increasingly ageing populations.
6 Climate change
The pandemic is also inextricably linked to another long-term, global challenge (See 鈥�The climate question鈥�). In the early stages of our response, scientists were hopeful that lockdowns around the world would result in a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. This initially seemed justified, with global emissions in April 2020 . But that optimism was short-lived, and even a partial return to normality pushed emissions back up and they ended the year only about .
The new hope is that the promises in many national plans to 鈥渂uild back better鈥� will result in more sustainable change, but we can hardly take this for granted. A further theme of our long-term generational perspective is how easily environmental concerns are knocked back by more immediate priorities. Looking back to the recession in the early 1990s and the financial crisis in 2008, for example, shows how quickly the salience of climate change dropped, including among the young: we can鈥檛 count on Generation Covid to deliver a step change in climate action when they will have very pressing immediate concerns.
As philosopher Roman Krznaric suggests, there is a tension between our ability to to win out, particularly following crises. But we have also delivered longer-term visions before, in post-depression and post-war 鈥渘ew deals鈥�: we can think long if we really want to.
7 Generations apart
One of the hidden dangers of the horoscope-based view of generations is that it makes it seem as if there is nothing we can do to affect the future: if generations have a set character by the time they come of age, they are already on a fixed path. This fatalism is misleading because action by governments and others can still shape the future. But will tensions between generations undermine such efforts?
Fears of a generational war ramped up in the early days of the pandemic, as restrictions necessary to protect the oldest generations brought immediate and long-term negative effects for the youngest. Many feared that young people would simply flout the rules. But that didn鈥檛 happen. Instead, the overall picture, across countries and age groups, has been of incredible compliance. The strength of our connections up and down the generations, in our love for family, friends and fellow citizens, strongly outweighed generational self-interest. Yet the notion of generations pitted against each other persists. Why?
First, one of the key reasons we are so susceptible to these clich茅s is the increasingly separate lives that younger and older people are living. , there was little difference in the age mix between town and country in the UK, for example. Since then, the populations in villages and smaller towns have become older and in cities have become younger. Similar trends are seen in the US. As gerontologist : 鈥淲e鈥檙e in the midst of a dangerous experiment. This is the most age-segregated society that鈥檚 ever been.鈥�
This separation not only fuels stereotypes and tension, but also strips away the benefits that study after study shows intergenerational connection provides. The short-term impact of the pandemic has been to separate age groups even more. In our survey, 60 per cent of respondents agreed that there is more conflict between older and younger people in the UK now than a few decades ago, and Generation Z and millennials were more likely than baby boomers and Generation X to feel this way.
This is one area in which the longer-term impacts of the pandemic may help, because the greater incidence of homeworking is leading to early signs of a reversal in the long-term trend towards cities getting younger and everywhere else older. , California, points out that as the US population disperses, economic, cultural and generational gaps between coastal cities and inland communities may start to shrink.
The second generational danger we face following the pandemic is whether it will accelerate the already steep decline in our belief that the future can be better for our children and grandchildren. , most people in Great Britain expected young people to have a better future than their parents 鈥� but in our new survey only a quarter of Britons do.
The pandemic will continue to put pressure on this belief, but it is wrong-headed to frame it as a battle between generations. It is actually about how we all see the future, and how the choices we make now will reverberate through the years.
Before the pandemic, there were already some nascent signs that we are starting to adopt this longer-term thinking: the United Arab Emirates now has a ; and Hungary has an . The Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 in Wales has created a . As Jane Davidson, the minister who proposed it, says, 鈥渋t is revolutionary because it enshrines into law that the well-being of the current and future people of Wales is explicitly the core purpose of the government in Wales鈥�.
There is reason to hope that this kind of thinking will gain traction as we emerge from the pandemic, if only so we can give our fuller attention to the climate crisis we all face. Living through this pivotal moment in the battle against climate change, and the generation-defining event of the pandemic, should give us all a different perspective on what matters.
Vital to this is improving the outlook for all our young people, not just those with greater resources. As political scientist Robert Putnam outlines in his 2015 book Our Kids, the programmes that achieved this in the decades following the second world war had at their heart a 鈥渃ommitment to invest in other people鈥檚 children. And underlying that commitment was a deeper sense that those kids, too, were our kids鈥�. We need the same thinking to support Generation Covid.
There is growing recognition of the need for governments to act with the greater social imagination we saw following the second world war to address the coming challenges. Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London, says governments have been 鈥渢inkering, not leading鈥�. This needs to change, because 鈥渙nly government has the capacity to steer the transformation necessary鈥�, she adds. This is a long-term, intergenerational project that we all need to invest in, because ultimately, to some degree, we will all be Generation Covid.
What generation do you belong to?
The table below outlines the most accepted definitions of the various generations. There isn鈥檛 complete agreement on where one generation ends and another starts, particularly around millennials and Generation Z, and the boundaries may be disrupted if 鈥淕eneration Covid鈥� sticks as a category.
Where we place the cut-offs is arbitrary to some degree. Those at the edges of each group will tend to share characteristics with their birth year neighbours, because social change tends to be gradual rather than sudden. We can see that in our survey (see main story): many of us place ourselves in the wrong generation, with only baby boomers reliably knowing which generation they belong to, while everyone else gets it right half the time or less.
None of which should devalue generational thinking. Many other social classifications 鈥� like social class 鈥� also simplify the underlying realities and people don鈥檛 always know where they fit, yet the classifications still tell us something about the make-up of society.
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Bobby Duffy is a professor of public policy at King鈥檚 College London and author of Generations: Does when you鈥檙e born shape who you are? To buy a copy, go to
