The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

Generation X’s Bad Rap

People have mistakenly maligned Generation X for years for not performing “at the level of the Boomers.” A prominent book even pointed out the poor performance I just described and portrays Gen Xers as selfish, lazy slackers. The author completely missed the fact that this issue is quantitative, not qualitative.

In fact, Xers contribute money to their parties, turn out at polls, and participate actively in government at a rate equal to Boomers age for age. There just aren’t as many of them. Between 1945 and 1964 (the Boomer generation) about seventy-eight million babies were born in the United States. Between 1965 and 1984 (Gen X) there were about sixty-nine million born—or about nine million fewer. That’s an 11 percent ...