The Next America, Pew Research Center
The Next America, Pew Research Center
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The Next America
Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown

Author: Pew Research Center, Paul Taylor

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 8 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/28/2014


Synopsis

The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past.

America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use.

Today's Millennials—well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twentysomethings—are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they'd hoped. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put stresses on our social safety net, and presented our elected leaders with a daunting challenge: how to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future.

Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40—both unprecedented milestones. But other rapidly aging economic powers like China, Germany, and Japan will have populations that are much older. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. If we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order, we can keep our economy second to none. But doing so means we have to rebalance the social compact that binds young and old. In tomorrow's world, yesterday's math will not add up.

Drawing on Pew Research Center's extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we're headed—toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

About Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis, and other empirical social science research.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Melissa on May 19, 2014

A very educational nonfiction title observing a variety of statistics within generational demographies-- primarily between the old and the young (the Baby Boomers and the Silents vs. the Millennials and Gen-Xers). The author cites a plethora of statistical information (the great bulk of which came f......more

Goodreads review by erforscherin on January 16, 2018

If you love piecing together a story from data and graphs, this is the book for you! There’s a treasure trove of cool graphs from Pew reports here exploring the composition, lives, and beliefs of different generations in the U.S. (Silent vs. Baby Boomers vs. Gen X vs. Millennials), and Taylor does a......more

Goodreads review by Dawn on June 21, 2014

as is typical for my gen (x), I resent being ignored in this book in addition to everywhere else. baby boomers got it wrong when they made it all about "me" without considering consequences for their children. in every. single. way. and they call my gen lost. we are not lost, we are pissed. stop dis......more

Goodreads review by Justin on December 21, 2019

It's amazing how much can change in five years. While The Next America does make some points, and references statistics that relay worthwhile information, many parts are already outdated enough that the notions they espouse are quaint at best, and hopelessly out of touch at worst. The prime offender......more