Baby Boomers – those who are currently between 50 and 70 years old – are often blamed by younger generations for many issues, from those associated with pensions and healthcare, to the unaffordability of housing, and even the vote to leave the EU. Jennie Bristow outlines the discourse and explains its implications.
Amidst the raw outrage that followed the EU referendum vote on 23 June 2016, one generation found itself to be a particular target. ‘Baby boomers, you have already robbed your children of their future. Don’t make it worse by voting for Brexit,’ appealed James Moore in the Independent the day before the vote. ‘“This vote doesn’t represent the younger generation who will have to live with the consequences”: Millennials vent fury at baby boomers for voting Britain OUT of the EU’, reported Alex Matthews for the Mail two days later. As the recriminations flew, an image took hold: hordes of wealthy, powerful Baby Boomers, engaged in a generational conspiracy to do everything possible to rob the young of their rightful future.
‘This is not the first time our generation has suffered this kind of treatment,’ complained Philip Bronk from London on the Independent’s letters page. He echoed the now well-established cultural script of Boomer-blaming:
‘The baby boomers subsidised their lives with massive public borrowing, then voted for austerity; they enjoyed final salary pension schemes, then abolished them; they enjoyed free university education, then voted to abolish that too; they enjoyed public utilities, then sold them off; and now, after enjoying a lifetime of EU citizenship, they’ve voted to take it away from us – not even to save money, but simply to give them a nationalistic thrill. Enough is enough!’
Such generational bitterness evades some of the more nuanced features of the Brexit vote: such as the split within generations. Older people were more likely to have voted ‘Leave’ than younger people, but polls suggest that just under two-fifths of Baby Boomers (generally – albeit contentiously – defined as those born between 1945 and 1965, now aged between about 50 and 70) voted to remain in the EU.
As for why the Boomers, as a generation, should be associated with a vote to Leave, the media narrative offers little specific explanation. A destructive selfishness is presumed – although, as Judith Woods suggests in the Telegraph, many Brexit-voting Boomers were ‘genuinely convinced they were doing what was best for Britain, regardless of the fallout’. Knee-jerk post-Brexit Boomer blaming seems to rely most heavily on a generalised, and increasingly consolidated, sentiment that the political, cultural, and economic difficulties that we face today are the fault of people born in the two decades after the Second World War.
The narrative of Boomer-blaming is the subject of a recent article, which sought to understand the evolution of claims that the Boomer generation are responsible for myriad social problems – from overpriced housing to the global economic crisis to the difficulties afflicting pensions and healthcare provision. I conducted a media analysis of articles published in a sample of national British newspapers from 1986 to 2011, to understand how the discussion of the Boomer generation has changed over this time. I found that, while the Boomers have been of some interest to British newspapers for a number of years, it is only in recent years that this generation has been constructed predominantly as a problem; and that it has been constructed as a problem in two main ways.
First, the Boomers are constructed as an economic problem. As a relatively large generation, they stand accused of using a disproportionate share of society’s resources. This coincides with a wider anxiety about the effects of an ageing population, and the problems afflicting the welfare state. Thus, the trope of ‘Boomergeddon’ is used in 2006, in articles speculating about the impact of the Boomers’ impending retirement, and reflects and reinforces a negative image of ‘ageing’.
Particularly since the global financial crisis of 2007-8, Boomer-blaming has also focused on their historical location: children of the ‘post-war Boom’ whose coming-of-age is associated with the 1960s. Not only are they draining the pension pot, it is claimed: they have used up everything. Back in 2008, the journalist Sarah Vine wrote in the Times that members of this ‘extraordinary generation’ were not only ‘economically blessed’:
‘they also had some of the most hedonistic and uncomplicated fun since the Romans: all the sex (by the time that we came of age, HIV had put a stop to all that), the best music (I’m sorry, Coldplay is no match for Jimi Hendrix), all the easy idealism of privilege.’
A heavily-moralised narrative constructs the Boomer generation as a cultural problem, via their association with the Sixties, and in turn blames this generation for political mismanagement, economic crisis, and a selfish, hedonistic approach to life. The trope of ‘Boomergeddon’ comes to symbolise the problem of a generation that, allegedly, has dominated society by its size and outlook, and wreaked havoc for those born later.
As I outline in my article, Boomer-blaming incorporates a number of troubling simplifications and assertions. The assumption that the Boomer generation as a whole shared a particular experience associated with some of its members (university education, final salary pension schemes, ‘all the sex’), and that the Sixties generation somehow missed the Seventies, refuses to recognise inequalities, differential experiences, and historical shifts, and imposes a uniformity of opinion on a heterogeneous group.
The elision of ‘Baby Boomers’ with ‘old people’ presents the elderly as a burden to society – even when they are still actively middle-aged. This, too, should give us pause. In the making of “Boomergeddon”, we can see how apocalyptic warnings about a demographic pensions time-bomb lead to a discussion about the problem of longevity, with its implication that economic problems would be ameliorated if only unproductive older people would shuffle of this mortal coil with greater haste. The narrative of post-Brexit Boomer blaming, meanwhile, has been replete with cries of ‘generational betrayal’, underpinned by the claim that the older generation ‘will not be around to see the damage wreaked’ by the decision to leave the EU. According to such logic, disenfranchisement is too good for them.
Boomer-blaming often wraps itself in the clothes of ‘inter-generational justice’. I suggest that its effect is rather to foment division, and encourage a fatalistic sense of resentment and powerlessness among young people.
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Note: The above is based on the author’s article, published in The British Journal of Sociology. This article was first published at British Politics and Policy at LSE. It gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Jennie Bristow – Canterbury Christ Church University
Jennie Bristow is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University. She is the author of Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), The Sociology of Generations: New directions and challenges (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), and co-author of Parenting Culture Studies (Palgrave Macmillan 2014).
Congratulations on challenging generalities and assumptions pushed by the media.
In my experience of talking to hundreds of Referendum voters, the only thing that could be said about the older generation was …
…they had lived through the development (extended reach) of the EU and could identify consequences that they didn’t like.
Younger people might not have had quite such a clear idea of the impact of the EU … but Leavers of almost any age had definite experiences that they linked to uncontrolled immigration or EU red tape.
Those in their late forties knew that their 20-something children could not afford home at the same age.
Those with children still at school might have been aware of the growing pressure on school places.
Those with younger children (esp. around London) would have know that their local primary school had added extra classrooms.to meet extra demand.
Any of the above who actually talekd to their pension-age parents would have heard of longer waits for a GP appointment.
Anyone using transport would have experienced overcrowded road and rail.
Given the above personal experiences, it was perhaps teh refusal to even mention the elephang in the room of too many people that made Leavers even more determined.
But it was about more than just immigration.
Anyone in middle or upper management of a small business – and almost all self-employed tradesmen – would have experienced EU red tape.
(Those working for a large FTSE-100 company wouldn’t have cared much because a) top bosses have an army to fill the forms or b) it meant job security !)
And lastly ….
….. these experiences would have been felt by one third or more in so-called “Remain areas”.
We can all generalise but,it seems only some of us recognise nuances !
There’s nothing remotely “nuanced” about your argument. It’s the bog standard immigration is the root of all evil, young people don’t know they’re born, EU red tape destroys business routine.
A “nuanced” argument would be one that recognises Brexit isn’t going to magically make our public services better simply by reducing the number of foreigners in the country. Public services rely on funding. If you damage the economy then public services will get worse, not better. You’ve also used the classic Vote Leave endorsed line of pretending only multinationals wanted to stay in the EU and that small businesses are being crippled under EU red tape. There’s no evidence to back that up: the poll conducted on this by the FSB of 6,000 SMEs showed 53% for Remain and 47% for Leave.
As someone born in the mid-1930s, I inevitably have a rather different perspective on the Baby Boomers than younger commentators. Though during childhood I was shielded from the worst horrors of the second world war, I saw then and over the next few years more than enough – terribly injured airmen, devastated cities (our own house in London had a direct hit in 1940), years of nights spent sheltering from air raids, complete unavailability of many things, and constant shortages and rationing of virtually everything else – to learn for myself that war was an appalling way to resolve disputes. But I also learnt that frugal living, going without, and mending, reusing and recycling everything that could be (and keeping much of the rest “just in case”) did not have to mean unhappiness. If you wanted to get something, it went without saying that you saved up till you had enough; buying things on hire purchase (“the never-never”) only really took off in the late 1950s. All this was greatly reinforced when I had the best part of a gap year in Austria, mostly Vienna, in 1954, and saw and heard how much worse it had been for them, and still more so elsewhere. In short, unlike the Baby Boomers, my generation shared much the same visceral experiences that motivated the founders of the Common Market to do what they did. And though we Brits were all hugely proud of having won the war (with some help from Uncles Sam and Joe, of course, but no need to dwell on that), the humiliating Suez fiasco in 1956 put paid to any illusions that the UK might still be able to play a major role on the world stage on its own – to do that we had to ally ourselves with others.
By contrast, the experiences of most Baby Boomers in their formative years were quite different. They grew up while the UK economy was rapidly recovering, and after shortages and rationing had become a thing of the past. Consumerism was the new god, and pursuing it was not only fun but good for the country. For a long time, most neighbourhoods were still almost 100% white British, though London, and later the Midlands, were beginning to host significant numbers of Caribbeans and south Asians. Despite fairly frequent financial crises, average real incomes rose steadily for decades; after the power of the unions had been curtailed in the 1980s there seemed no reason to suppose this growth would not continue pretty well indefinitely, at least for those outside the highly unionised industries. Certainly, no government minister was going to suggest otherwise. Britain generally prospered, though largely unaware that its foreign competitors were often prospering more, and overtaking the UK in crucial respects. Suez, if remembered at all, was quietly forgotten.
In 2017 we can now see how illusory much of what at the time had seemed to be solid and irreversible progress actually was. The lifetime jobs in manufacturing for the relatively poorly educated and unskilled have gone, and there is hardly anywhere left for such people to go to. Many have of course now reached pension age, though making ends meet on just a state pension is virtually impossible. It is hardly surprising that those for whom the prospects of continuous growth that were held out to them 20 or 30 years ago, see these now as a pack of lies, have no use for politicians preaching “austerity”, and are seduced by others peddling nostalgia and promising a cost-free return to the happier times of their youth when Britain held its head high above all others, the Common Market played no part in their lives, and Britain was largely white. Most of their unhappiness has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU; far more is due to the UK having failed ever since the last war to face up to, and respond positively to, its diminished position in the world. Even if indulging in a nostalgic attempt to “take back control” does threaten jobs in the UK, a large proportion of them no longer have any jobs left to risk
.
I don’t blame the Baby Boomers for their good fortune to have lived when they did – they simply followed the lead of the politicians of their times. The most astute should have realised that the good times could not last for ever, but how many foresaw and took precautions against the financial crash of 2008? However, that is not to deny the truth of the letter to the Independent from Philip Bronk that the author quotes. If the optimism of earlier politicians should have been taken with a bucket full of salt, that is equally true of the blind optimism of those in and close to the Government now seeking to lead us into a hard Brexit.
Senior Lecturer Jennie may be interested to read Economist Lawrence Kotlikoff’s book “The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future” even if it is dated at 2004. You can find various synopses and reviews on the internet, including Amazon.com customer reviews. Full disclosure: I am not Lawrence.
I think there is an element of residual ill-feeling from the younger generation to baby boomers, but it is human to want for oneself and for your individual family, but not the needs of a generation. However, when such a group of individuals form the bulk of a population, essentially a skewed demographic, democracy rewards parties providing election sweetners to such groups and the baby boomers have recieved many. Boomers appear to be more willing to provide in micro ways for their own family i.e. financial planning (placing houses in trusts), rather than more macro ways that generational change requires; i.e changes in voting behaviour from more individualistic to more generational.
I am not sure which social constrictivist/ discourse approach the author uses (Foucault, Fairclough, Laclau & Mouffe etc) but discourse analytical approaches do not lend themselves to mormative judgements – e.g. Boomers are used as ‘scapegoats’. I cannot see how the author can reach such a conclusion from the ontological/ epsitemological framework she is using. Therefore her conclusion here is merely her subjective viewpoint which carries no more weight than my personal opinon that the boomers (as a generation) should take a chunck of respomsibility for the mess we are in. This is not to deny the category of the boomers is problematic and the heterogeneous – which is a valid observation. However to say they are being ‘scapegoated’ by media discourse requires a hell of a lot more unpacking amd needs to be explained in the context of the theoretical conception of discourse the author is using/abusing
” boomers (as a generation) should take a chunck of respomsibility for the mess we are in.”
It is quite insulting to damn an entire generation of people, most of whom had no control over events.
By all means refer to politicians and business leaders.
Also, it depends what “mess” one is referring to:
– The “mess” caused by boomer politicians who thought that a government can keep spending more than it receives – and that the next generation can pay the bill
– Deluding themselves that “being at the heart of Europe” and nebulous “influence” was better than self-determination with co-operation
– Deluding themselves that EU immigration is mostly about high-earning, high tax-paying, professionals and that house prices wouldn’t rise faster than RPI
What is beyond rude is a public policy landscape that attacks working age people whislt protecting boomer benefits.
What is even worse is expecting my generation to continue to subsidise this whilst also picking up the tab for the boomer brexit. Perhaps we should abolish pensions (largest ‘welfare’ expenditure by a country mile) and make boomers take working age benefits?
The Conservatives proposed some modest reforms to pensioner benefits – and were trashed by Labour and the media.
Why undermine a reasonable conversation with the side issue of Brexit?
In why case, why should there be a “tab” for Brexit?
To the contrary:
– the UK should no longer be paying £billions to the EU
– the economy should profit from trade with the RoW
Somebody clearly failed to grasp the sentence: “This is not to deny the category of the boomers is problematic and the heterogeneous – which is a valid observation.” Should I have used shorter words?
“boomers (as a generation) should take a chunck of respomsibility for the mess we are in.“
1. Generalising about a generation is lazy and rude.
But if the focus is on “boomer politicians and business leaders” one can have a conversation.
2. And what is the “mess” ?
Is it:
– The idea that governments can spend more than they receive – year after year – and future generations can repay it ?
– The delusion that most EU immigrants are high earning, high tax-paying professionals ?
– The delusion that the UK can absorb millions of extra people without house prices rising faster than RPI ?
If there are ANY generational questions, the biggest one is…
…. Why do so many 20-somethings complain about housing costs (esp. in London) – while refusing to question the obvious root cause of too many people ?
Is it something they were (not) taught ?
“Why do so many 20-somethings complain about housing costs (esp. in London) – while refusing to question the obvious root cause of too many people ?”
Let’s dissect this comment. First, the obvious point to be made here is that people with an anti-immigration agenda consistently try to push the line that immigration is the root cause of higher house prices (as you’ve done again here). You do this because you want people to redirect their anger at house prices toward immigration. You ask why 20-somethings “refuse to do this” and the answer is, quite simply, because they have some basic common sense and don’t view immigration as the root of all evil.
Second, this question has been addressed by several studies in the last few years. The idea that higher immigration is the primary driver of high house prices is incredibly misleading. Several studies have found that immigration does not lead to significant increases in house prices at the aggregate level, and some recent studies (Sa, 2014) have found it can actually decrease house prices because of the indirect effect it has on the mobility response of people who already live in the UK. The overall picture is that whatever effect immigration has on house prices is mixed and geographically specific, but that even if immigration does impact on house prices, the real drivers of higher house prices are not simple changes in population numbers, but a whole host of other factors from the housing supply, to the state of the economy, tax and spend policies, interest rates, incomes, and so on.
Put simply, pretending it’s just about there being “too many people” is little more than a cheap line you hear on a regular basis from people trying to push an anti-immigration agenda. It’s at odds with the evidence, it’s at odds with common sense, and the fact most young people are intelligent enough to see through that kind of rhetoric isn’t something to bemoan, it’s something to be proud of.
“immigration as the root of all evil”
Burns is at it again with his strawmen / putting words into people’s mouths !
The issue is not “immigration” of itself – but numbers.
“several studies …. immigration does not lead to significant increases in house prices”.
Please identify these Studies.
I note the weasel words “at the aggregate level”.
What does this mean? That lower prices in (say) Middlesborough offset higher prices in London ?
Please explain how – and where – house prices in the UK have reduced – “because of immigration”.
“a whole host of other factors”
Over 24 years, house prices in Outer London have risen 5 fold – RPI has doubled.
“other factors” will be marginal (+/- 20% perhaps) – not 250%.
How does the fact of millions of extra people demanding a home not dwarf all other factors?
It is NOT about “an anti-immigration agenda” (with the not so subtle subtext of that phrase)
A domestic baby-boom could have a similar effect – but we would have a decade or two to plan for the new homes.
The inability to make the connection between too many people and house price rises is:
“at odds with evidence, at odds with common sense”.
“Please identify these Studies. Please explain how – and where – house prices in the UK have reduced – “because of immigration”.”
A predictably bizarre response. I directly named a study and told you why it came to the conclusion that immigration can lead to a reduction in house prices (because of the indirect effect it has on the mobility response of people who already live in the UK). Yet you’ve still responded by demanding I name the study and explain why immigration can lead to a reduction in house prices. You either didn’t read the comment properly or you can’t be bothered to look up the study (which I would link to but that seems to result in my comments being blocked on here). I’ll suggest you just google it like a normal person.
—–
“It is NOT about “an anti-immigration agenda” (with the not so subtle subtext of that phrase)
A domestic baby-boom could have a similar effect – but we would have a decade or two to plan for the new homes.”
I’m familiar with your routine of complaining about being slandered whenever anyone points out your obvious anti-immigration/anti-EU worldview, but it’s pretty laughable that you’ve opted to use it in this case. Please go on and tell us what public policy response you would implement to prevent a domestic baby boom. Forced sterilization? One child per family? I’d love to know. You directly stated the “root cause” of high house prices was that there are “too many people”, not that there’s a lack of supply. How exactly do you propose we reduce the number of births in the country to address your non-existent baby boom?
Alternatively, you could have the intellectual integrity to take ownership of your views for once.
Burns,
You say you ” directly named a study” and (rudely) add
“You either didn’t read the comment properly or you can’t be bothered to look up the study”
So please explain what (Sa, 2014) means. A search reveals a lot from South Africa !
If you want people to believe that more people wanting homes can reduce house prices, I would suggest that you signpost the source clearly.
“complaining about being slandered”
Another strawman from Burns. Just STOP putting words into people’s mouths (posts)
More strawmen with “forced sterilization” “one child per family”.
To repeat (with emphasis):
“A domestic baby-boom could have a similar effect – BUT WE WOULD HAVE A DECADE OR TWO TO PLAN FOR NEW HOMES”.
And during those decades would you damn any discussion about practical limits on population – 80 million, 100 million, more ?
– Family planning – whether it should have no part in social/education policy ….
But birth rates are a digression.
The current issue is too many extra people demanding homes and prerssuirng public services – and you seem to want the flow to continue unabated.
I have plenty of “intellectual integrity to take ownership of (my) views for once.”
A greater issue is YOUR “integrity” for constantly distorting the views of people with whom you disagree and then damning those (fake) views.
Just make you own case.
Let’s recap the conversation Jules. First, you left a comment in which you implied young people were deluded for not complaining about the size of the UK population. You attacked the idea that EU immigrants provide a net contribution to the public finances (with a weasel-worded line about the majority not being high tax payers – ignoring the overall contribution, which you’ve done before) then claimed that it’s deluded to believe “that the UK can absorb millions of extra people without house prices rising”.
It’s a standard line you hear constantly from anti-immigration campaigners. I gave you the standard response: the idea immigration is the root cause of high house prices isn’t grounded in evidence and consistently trying to push that idea doesn’t do anything for ordinary citizens, it simply reflects a very narrow political agenda that you happen to subscribe to.
Everyone and their dog knows why you posted that argument and what you’re arguing for. But evidently you seem to revel in complaining about other people misquoting you. I suspect the reason why you trot this out in every exchange is that in the absence of having a sensible counter-argument you’d far rather we descend into a slagging match in which we go back and forward arguing over what you did/didn’t say, all the while ignoring the incredibly crude and transparent agenda that you’re consistently trying to push. The fact that you want to do this is irrelevant to me: I’ll call your posts for what they are.
But in this particular case your strained attempts to try and pretend that you somehow weren’t talking about immigration make no sense whatsoever. You began by saying that the size of the population is the root cause of high house prices. You said nothing about supply. The only possible reason you could raise that point if you’re not talking about immigration is if you’re advocating a public policy response to high birth rates, which as I pointed out would lead to completely ridiculous implications like us implementing a one child per family rule.
The only feasible public policy response to a high population that we have under these terms is a reduction in immigration. Instead of just accepting that you are in fact talking about immigration, you felt the need to dance on the head of a pin to try and pretend (for some unknown reason) that your initial statement could somehow also apply to high birth rates and only at that point did you start discussing supply (because you know fine well it’s absurd to think that the government is going to implement policies that discourage British citizens from having children). You’ve then rewritten this line about the housing supply again in capital letters, as if we didn’t see it the first time.
A normal response to my initial comment would have been to provide a reasonable counter-argument in favour of restrictions on immigration, given that’s what you are, in fact, arguing for. There’s still time for you to do that if you want to be an adult.
*The full reference to the house price study (first online in 2014) is Immigration and House Prices in the UK, Filip Sa, the final publication was in the Economic Journal in Volume 125, Issue 587 September 2015, Pages 1393–1424.