The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown - Hardcover

Taylor, Paul; Pew Research Center

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1610393503 ISBN 13: 9781610393508

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 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 twenty-somethings—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 this title

About the Author:

Paul Taylor is a Senior Fellow at the Pew Research Center, where he oversees demographic, social, and generational research. He is the author of See How They Run and coauthor of The Old News Versus the New News. He is a former reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered presidential politics and served as a foreign correspondent. He and his wife live in Bethesda, Maryland.

Review:

An eye-opening and wonderfully written account of how swiftly our country is changing, and how we can preserve our social compact across the generational and ethnic divide. A brilliant analyst of public policy and social trends, Paul Taylor offers a hopeful look at America's future in challenging times studded with fact, and penetrating and revealing from page to page. The Next America is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to know where we are, and where we are going.” Richard North Patterson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Loss of Innocence

Informed by decades of research data, The Next America is a lucid exploration of the social, cultural, economic, and demographic trends that are reshaping every corner of our society. Taylor's focus is the fundamental generational shifts that are redefining who we are as a people. His analysis of where we've been and where we're headed is the best and most comprehensive you'll read this year.” Neil Howe, author of The Fourth Turn and Millennials Rising

The Next America provides a lively, readable guided tour through the numbers that will influence how well the young adults of today will support the seniors of tomorrow.” Andrew Cherlin, Griswold Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Marriage Go-Round

Masterful” Washington Post

The book's greatest strength lies in its detailed analysis of significant trends from politics to lifestyle choices among the four generational groups surveyed .Taylor proves a plainspoken translator of survey data, and makes statistical techniques accessible to the lay reader.” Publishers Weekly

An incisive survey of vast recent changes in American society and the ever-wider generation gap between baby boomers and millennials . In this well-written, data-rich book, Taylor examines the demographic, economic, social, cultural and technological changes that are reshaping the nation . An authoritative report and required reading for policymakers.” Kirkus

Well-written, fact-packed, neatly graphed, comprehensive description of the contemporary US Highly recommended.” CHOICE

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1610393503
• ISBN 13: 9781610393508
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288