Brian Lehrer: Now the perfect follow up guests to our recent oral history series about your generations and your defining news events decade-by-decade, it's Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, whose new book is called The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Those of you who listen regularly know that Philip comes on fairly often to talk about news and national politics of the day. What you may not know is that Philip is a data geek extraordinaire, and this book is brimming with fascinating numbers that tell the story of America going through a generational transition right now. In addition to Phillips insightful narrative about what it all means, especially for a millennial and Gen Z Americans facing the challenges of leadership next. Philip congratulations on the book. And welcome back to WNYC.

Philip Bump: Thank you very much. That's very kind.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with some basic stats? How big was the baby boom, that it got that nickname in the first place?

Philip Bump: One of the things I discovered as I was researching the book, is probably even the baby boomers, the scale of the baby boom is hard to get our minds around. The number I like to cite is when in 1945, before the boom began, there were about 140 million people in America. Over the course of the next 19 years, the period that defines this demographic shift that was the baby boom, there are more than 75 million babies born. That's more than 50% of the existing population in 1945 were born as babies of the course of the next 19 years.

The effect of that should be obvious, instantaneously there's a massive market for things like diapers, you have to build new elementary schools. We see this huge surge in the number of people that are being added to the United States. Then secondarily, this huge shift in what America has to do to accommodate them.

Brian Lehrer: Does that mean that the Depression and World War II era Americans, what Tom Brokaw called the greatest generation in his book of that title. That they had more kids on average than their parents who had them in the 1920s or so. The urge to procreate actually changed from one generation to the next in the 20th century?

Philip Bump: There were a number of factors that actually contributed to baby boom, Landon Jones wrote a really great book about the baby boom back in 1980. Walks through a lot of the actual factors that played into that, which is where I learned about it, essentially. There were a number of things that shifted. There was, of course, this post World War II period. People like to think of the baby boom as being this function of soldiers returning home, and that's obviously not accurate, given that it lasted 19 years. It is the case that America was seeing this new era of prosperity, this new era of confidence that didn't exist previously.

There were lots of ways in which it was easier to become a parent then than it had been in decades prior to your point about the Great Depression. You're not having a lot of kids in the Great Depression if you can avoid it, because there's so many economic strains. In this era of huge economic prosperity, having all these kids makes a lot more sense, but then that also then helps contribute to the economic prosperity, and as such that helps propagate the boom.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll take calls for Philip Bump into blocks. First, if you are Gen X or below, that is anyone younger than a baby boomer, how good or bad do you feel about boomers as stewards of the world during their prime years in leadership? 212-433 WNYC. 212-433-9692. We'll take Boomer calls after that, but first, if you are Gen X or below, so anyone younger than a baby boomer how good or bad do you feel about boomers as stewards of the world during their prime years in leadership? Plus anything you want to ask Phillip Bump, author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. 212-433 WNY, 212-433-9692, or a tweet @BrianLehrer.

Philip, if there's a stereotype of an American Baby Boomer, it's probably of a white liberal college student who protested the war in Vietnam and smoked pot long before it was sold in dispensaries. That would miss the diversity of experience within the generation, and I know you get into this, based on race and class and education and other defining things. Can you start to paint a next level deep portrait of what the baby boomer demographics really were?

Philip Bump: Certainly. I think the best way to consider who the baby boom was, was to remember that the baby boom really defines what America is in this moment. That the baby boom not only through sheer scale and population, but really reshaped America as it grew older, simply because we had to accommodate all of these new Americans. Just the baby boomers makes such a large percentage of America for so long, that when we think about the baby boomers, it's just fair to think generally about the ways in which America itself is diverse.

I think one of the reasons that the perception of the baby boom has shifted, is because the baby boom does look different than younger Americans in really, really key ways, particularly around racial diversity. I think that this perception that we have currently of baby boomers as being heavily white, which is accurate, it is a much more densely white generation than generations that followed. I think part of that is simply because we have this heightened difference between older and younger. You're right, the baby boom itself is a huge group of people that has all sorts of political views, all sorts of economic levels.

There's this perception that baby boomers are wealthy because baby boomers hold so much aggregated wealth, but of course, there's a lot of baby boomers. On average, the average baby boomer is no wealthier than anyone else, it's just that the baby boom collectively has all this wealth, because there are so many of them. They of course, are also subject to the same disparities in wealth equality that the rest of the country has. There is also, when we talked about the tensions, which obviously, the book focuses on, there's also this tension within the boom itself, where boomers are cast as this very wealthy generation, but a lot of boomers are not particularly wealthy. One can imagine how you could grow resentful as a result of that.

Brian Lehrer: I can make an argument that when you correct for more enduring differences, generation largely disappears. The zip code you're born into in our segregated society says a lot more about who you will be economically and culturally, than whether you're a boomer or below. Is that what the research shows?

Philip Bump: That's broadly accurate, correct, but of course, then there are other confounding factors like race. When we talk about the fact that baby boomers are much more homogeneously white than our subsequent generations, then we have to consider what the advantages of being white mean, when it comes to economics and of course, then what it means for political views. Yes, you're absolutely right, that not only is there a lot of economic predetermination baked into who you are from a very early age, not insurmountable, but obviously it's there.

We also see, one of the things that's happened over the course of the baby boomers lifetimes, is we've seen this increased silosation of where people live and who they live near, that then contributes to a lot of the partisan tensions that we have. Simply because people don't live near a lot of people, or socialize with a lot of people who don't share their own views. There are a lot of ways in which your absolute right, where you're born, and what family you're born into dictates who you became to a significant extent. Then there are also ways in which that has been exacerbated by the choices that have been made over those decades.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Erica, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello Erica.

Erica: Hi. Wonderful. I have a very brief thing to say, which is I feel terribly about their stewardship as leaders. I feel that generation has been narcissistic is [unintelligible 00:07:48] that I think says it all, and been a major player in troubles with the environment that we're now facing. It's just either narcissism and selfish, being first mentality.

Brian Lehrer: Erica thank you very much. We'll get a reaction to that in a minute. Let's go to another caller first. Peter, in Matawan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi, how you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What are you thinking?

Peter: Well, I guess the whole question is, see, I was born in 1970, I'm 52 years old, so I guess I'm that classic Gen X cohort. My impression when I was going through college and getting out of college in the early 90s, because there was that whole '60s nostalgia thing. I always felt like people who were able to be baby boomers, always had a lot more of a rosier optimism because they always had a decent job, they always had no problems. Where like a lot of people my age had divorced parents, or my mom is an immigrant, so a lot of people in Gen X had silent generation parents, so you couldn't necessarily be as carefree about certain things.

I think a lot of people in my age group, did the slacker thing, because it was just a way to decompress from having divorced parents, or decompress from certain situations, because there's a lot more of a downbeat vibe. There is a reason why there's that whole grungy, downbeat thing, but we always had to work, that's the funny thing. I heard the earlier call in the earlier segment, how he's a 57 year old guy, and he made it through the tech boom, because he just knows that all he could depend on was himself. A lot of people in our generation had to be self-reliant and not as happy go lucky, whereas the previous generation, baby boom generation, people say of like, President Clinton's cohort, could afford to be all peace and love. I think that's a key difference.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting. That's quite a contrast, Philip, between the first two calls. Peter, there saying that because times were better economically for baby boomers than for Gen X-ers later, they could afford to be all peace and love and idealistic. Erica, the first caller was saying, No, the baby boomers did not leave me such a great world because they weren't idealistic enough. They were bad to the climate and they were narcissistic.

Philip Bump: I think that those things overlap in perhaps some unexpected ways. When we talk about climate change, for example, it is the case that about 20% of all of global carbon dioxide emissions occurred in the United States during the period when the baby boomers were alive, between 1946 and 2020, according to my analysis in the book. That's a significant effect on climate change, and it's a reason that climate change is now such a salient issue in American politics.

That by itself helps contribute to some of the generational tension that we see, because baby boomers, for the baby boom generation, there was not a huge focus on climate change, it was not something that was as present in the scientific conversation, much less the political conversation. Now we see differences among younger Americans who are focused on things like LGBTQ rights and climate change, that were not issues that were even focused on, particularly to a large extent, by baby boomer liberals, 20, 30 years ago. We see this intergenerational political tension that stems simply from the fact that politics themselves have changed, which I think speaks to the first point.

To the second point in optimism, it's absolutely the case. That the baby boomers at the outset were born into an America, as I said before, that's very wealthy, but it's also the case that the baby boom was a focus of a lot of attention. By virtue of scale, the United States had to figure out how to accommodate this generation. I previously mentioned Landon Jones in his 1980 book, but he spoke with baby boomers, and it took them a while to realize it was exceptional, the amount of tension they were getting. I think that I too as a member of Generation X, was able to understand, like, "I can see how we are in a different position than were our parents."

There's also a very practical side to that. There is research that shows that Americans today, Americans in post-baby boom generations, are less likely to earn the same income as their parents did, even adjusted over time, simply because the economy has changed. There are reasons also for us to be a little bit more skeptical, a little bit more wary than the boomers were when they were in their prime.

Brian Lehrer: Linda in Sparta, you're on WNYC. Hi, Linda.

Linda: Hello. Thank you for having me on. I'm millennial. I'm a Chinese-American immigrant, I immigrated to the United States when I was four from Beijing, China. I do feel like my parents have passed on a great work ethic as baby boomers who immigrated here. I do feel somewhat of a pressure to continue that optimism and the prosperity mindset going forward. I was just diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer last week, so it's been a ride. I do feel optimistic, probably because I don't know if I have any other option really at this point.

I think there's definitely, mental health has always somewhat been an issue that was never addressed by my parents. They just kept on working and working hard, and I know that's a huge issue for my generation currently and the younger generation.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that your parents as Chinese immigrants fit into a framework of American baby boomers generally, if we can call it that, or is their experience largely different because of their immigrant experience?

Linda: I think their experience is definitely different. They've never taken anything for granted, and have always worked hard for whatever they've really come up against, any negative experiences. That being said, it's definitely a uphill battle as immigrants and working hard and not having a network here. As the next generation, I don't know if that informs my perspective as a millennial. I just keep going [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I guess I'm wondering, did your parents ever say anything about born here baby boomers, and how they're similar or different to or from them, you know what I mean?

Linda: I think so. There's definitely a greater sense of prosperity, I think, or just being able to make mistakes and not have to pay as much of a consequence for them. I think being immigrants here, we don't have that luxury, we don't have that safety net. I think that's something that's been well-communicated for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: Linda, thank you very much. I hope you're well and call us again. Robert in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you.

Robert: Thank you for taking my call. My point, one of my thoughts was that when we talk about the baby boomers and their primary years in power, or their prime years in power, I don't know how far out of that we necessarily are, because we still see basically a gerontocracy in congress and politics. Then you also still see it in terms of the rate of construction of things like retirement homes, and communities and nursing homes and things like that and the rate at which new construction is popping up and largely driven by that generation.

I also wonder if the rate of population growth was just too much for our economic and political systems to handle. Because it's not like all the bad boomers were completely responsible for the climate situation we're now. Even stuff like unchecked economic and political systems that had never had to be checked at that point allowed it to get to this point.

Brian Lehrer: Robert, thank you. Very insightful points. He touches on a number of things that you explore in-depth in the book, Phillip. Where do you want to enter?

Philip Bump: I want to enter by talking about building retirement homes, because he's absolutely right. Again, we have to think about the fact that the baby boom over the course of the boom has seen this pattern. They get to be the kindergarten age, you got to start building kindergartens. They enter the workforce, what do you do with all of them? You don't have enough jobs, that's why we see an increase in college education even among baby boomers that helps contribute to things like the Vietnam War draft. You have all these kids who have just graduated from high school.

There are all these ways which over the course of time the baby boomers had to be accommodated. Now, part of the point of the book is we forget that the baby boom is so big and it is now reaching this point. I spoke with a woman who works with the retirement home industry, and they've been watching this coming for decades, and they're stoked. Because finally, this is their moment to benefit from the baby boom's arrival. Yes, we're absolutely seeing that, but it is also the case, yes, that the baby boom still wields disproportionate power relative to generations, simply because there are so many of them and because they have a unique set of needs.

At the same time, we have the millennials in particular coming up behind them, a generation that is almost as large numerically, although not as a percentage of the population, and they are making a different set of demands. They are saying, "We need things like housing, we need things like child care." You have a group of boomers that is very, very large, votes much more heavily and is helping make decisions about what happens.

That said, we do see some transfers of power. We see, for example, the Nancy Pelosi and the leadership of the Democratic Party chooses to step down in favor of younger representatives. In part, of course, because the Democrats lost the house, but in part, because the Democratic Party recognizes that they have a much larger constituency of younger people that they need to do a better job of representing. We see things like that, yes, it is the case the boomers still wield disproportionate power. It is however the case that there are starting to be these shifts, these downward generational shifts.

Just very quickly to the first caller, the fact that we're talking about her as an immigrant and a child of an immigrant family, is really important. The baby boom started at a lull in American immigration, immigration was still restricted because of the anti-immigrant backlash about a century ago. It didn't open up until after the baby boom. The baby boom is a much less densely immigrant heavy population than other generations, simply because of that factor. That's a key differentiator between them and younger Americans as well.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, the current moral panic, if I can call it that, over migrants coming across the southern border, I think obscures the fact that our country is economically stronger than some in Europe, or than Japan. Because as all of these wealthy industrialized countries see declining birth rates, and we have too, we have had a lot of immigration, keeping our worker to retiree ratio healthier than many of the others. I'm curious if you accept that as an economic premise, it sounds like you do. Does it play generationally into your book?

I could argue that the liberalized immigration law of 1965 is as big a factor as anything else in New York's success and America's success the last 50 years. Some would also argue it contributes to making the decline in wages possible, that we heard from the Gen X caller, and any caller younger than him would also say, because immigrants have less organizing power in the workplace. Does you research get into any of that?

Philip Bump: It does as a matter of fact. In fact, I just wrote a piece recently for the Washington Post about when we talk about the decline in China's population size that happened this year. The way in which we can compare that to the United States and how the United States doesn't see a similar decline because of immigration. If you speak to demographers, one of the things they will point to you is concern about this gap between the number of older Americans who will potentially need either direct explicit medical care, for example. Or will at the very least, need to rely on systems that depend upon taxes being paid by working Americans, and the number of people who are within the workforce.

You see this shift, there's been a spike essentially in the past 20 years as boomers are starting to retire. Boomers now make up most of retirees in America. You've seen this shift in this ratio, and this is concerning to demographers. If you ask those demographers what a solution is, they will often point to immigration, bring more people into the country, have more people fill these jobs. There is research that looks at this question of the extent to which the increase in immigration affects wages. There's a really good national study that was done several years ago that found that there were some communities in which an increase in immigration can tamp down on wages. Those were often communities that had a lot of immigrants, that there was not a profound effect broadly on the American economy according to this.

This was, I think, done through the National Science Foundation, something along those lines. There is lots of research on this. Demographers will absolutely point to immigration as a key asset that the United States has in trying to fend off this demographic decline.

Brian Lehrer: All right, we've taken some calls from people younger than baby boomers. Now, I'll flip the script and open the phones to baby boomers to answer the same question. How good or bad do you feel about your boomer generation as stewards of the world during your prime years in leadership? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Everybody else who's younger, if you're still holding on, thanks for waiting, but we couldn't get to all of your calls and we're going to flip the board here. Now. It's four baby boomers. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Respond to any of the younger callers who we were just listening to, or give us your own take on how your generation has done as stewards of the world during your prime years in leadership or anything you want to ask Phillip Bump. Questions are okay too.

Phillip Bump, author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America, your calls or tweet at Brian Lehrer, and we'll continue with all of that right after this. Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, the author now of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Before we take some more phone calls, Philip, you see what you call generational sniping as a function of the baby boomers not being as numerically daunting anymore and therefore vulnerable to challenges to their power. When you refer to generational sniping, what is the sniping usually about?

Philip Bump: I think that's obviously true, since that's what I argue. I also think that it's important to recognize that the sniping is enabled by the fact that younger Americans can be heard in a way that wasn't possible 50 years ago. We have things like, this great quote that I point to from a PR guy who's talking to Harpers a couple of years ago, and he said that you can be sitting in your bedroom in Cleveland, get a million dollars overnight. You can see people have a massive effect on people's awareness of what's happening in the world. That wasn't possible.

You can have millennial and Gen Z Americans raise issues and confront the baby boom generation in a way that didn't use to be possible and I think exacerbates tension. Particularly for baby boomers who are very used to being the center of attention, very used to wielding this power and getting their way and being the dominant thing that America talks about. To answer your question directly, the sorts of things that we often hear about are housing in particular. That the younger Americans are less able to afford housing. This is portrayed in intermixed with politics, that this is seen as something conservative.

It's also just important to contextualize in scale of the baby boom. Baby boomers own houses, many baby boomers who own houses see those houses as a storehouse of value that will be useful to them once they retire. They look to protect that storehouse of value. Then they often with more time and our hands can participate in public meetings and go and say, "Hey, we don't think this new housing should be built," out of concern that'll diminish their own property values. Then the downstream effects of that are that younger people have less access to affordable housing.

There are a lot of things like that where the baby boom is making decisions not collectively. They're not all standing around and voting, saying, "We don't want any new housing," but individually are making decisions that are comparable to one another at a massive scale that advantage a particular type of person and particular age group of person that then disadvantages younger people.

Brian Lehrer: But is it even in the remaining baby boomer's interest? One of the things from your book, if I'm characterizing this right. Is that if many boomers have their wealth tied up in the value of their homes and they need to cash out and downsize to pay for their own senior care, they need younger families to sell their homes too. There's a mismatch there, but is it really the boomers deciding not to build enough new housing, or what contributes to that shortage that we grapple with really every day on this show in terms of a current issue of the housing shortage?

Philip Bump: Obviously it's a very complex thing that can't just be reduced to one thing, but it is the case that not necessarily boomers as such, but homeowners broadly wield disproportionate power in determining what happens. In many places when new housing projects are offered, there was some fascinating research that's elevated in the book that looked at, that compared who was actually going to public meetings to discuss housing, what they were saying, and what their backgrounds were. They found that these were predominantly homeowners.

One of the fascinating aspects of that research was that they considered both before and after the pandemic. When these meetings moved to Zoom, and theoretically people who worked jobs or people who might otherwise not have been able to attend the meetings could just simply log in from home. They looked to see if that liberalized the group of people that was responding and it didn't. It was still homeowners who had the stake, who had more [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: If it's private homeowners largely who oppose the density that the political leaders say, we need to have enough supply to meet the demand for affordable housing. Then another way to look at that is generational, because that's who owns the private homes.

Philip Bump: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. This is not a small issue nationally either. There was research that was done that showed between, I think it was 1964 and 2009, had there been more housing in about 220 metropolitan areas in the United States, the American economy would've been almost a third larger. That the economy was hampered by that extent by this lack of housing nationally, over that period. This is not simply something that millennials are worried about, this is something broadly that can be potentially damaging the economy.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes with Philip Bump from the Washington Post and now author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. We took some younger-than-baby boomer callers. Let's take some Boomer callers now. Helene, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Helene.

Helene: Hi, Brian. I love your show and I listen to it whenever I can. I just have a very quick comment to make which is that earlier on, one of the younger people talked about baby boomers being selfish and not being interested in climate change. I just want to remind your listeners that baby boomers were on the forefront of marches and movements for social justice and for cleaner water and cleaner air and we did manage to change the politics in that respect in a small way. That's just a comment and I'm happy to take any comments off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Let me go through the set of callers here. We'll go to Ellen in Park Slope next. Hi, Ellen, you're on WNYC.

Ellen: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I just want to push back against the characterization of the baby boomer generation as being all hippies and about free love. We were a tough generation. I was born in 1950. I grew up ducking and covering under my desk in elementary school because of the imminent threat of nuclear disaster. The city was posted with airage shelters, that was elementary school. In Junior high school I was sent home to die with my family because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then two years later sent home because of the JFK assassination.

My college erupted after the Martin Luther King assassination. We were characterized by a string of-- The Vietnam War was a reason for massive demonstrations constantly. We were also the generation that had to react to Barry Goldwater's comment that the extremism in the defense of liberty was no vice, which is seeing the fruit of that now in the extreme right wing. There was a lot of fun. I went to incredible rock concerts. I enjoy seeing, headlines that refer to rock songs in all the newspapers because my generation is still in charge of certain things. To characterize us as carefree and always prosperous is I think a misnomer.

Brian Lehrer: Ellen, thank you very much. Let's go to Wanda in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi Wanda.

Wanda: Hi. I just wanted to say that some of the characterizations of boomers, I am a boomer, I don't even recognize the idea, the concept that we were wealthy. I have never owned a house in my life, never been able to own a house in my life. I have four degrees. At least in my group, we were the people who cared about issues somewhat like the previous callers stated, that cared about issues more than money. We were pushing the envelope of the existing establishment our time.

Brian Lehrer: Though it depended who and when, right? Because by the time it got to the 1980s, baby boomers voted mostly for Ronald Reagan, and then yes, they voted mostly for Clinton, but then they voted mostly for George W. Bush, and oh, by the way for Trump in 2016.

Philip Bump: Yes, that's exactly right. I think that the callers raise absolutely valid points, which is that when we talk about the baby boom, it is a large and varied group of people. That is absolutely the case. It is, however, also the case that a lot of baby boomers do own houses, that were able to afford houses at some point in their lives. It is not the case that all baby boomers were carefree and prosperous. It is, however, the case that the baby boom emerged in a time when the country was prosperous, and the economy was very good, and that there were possibilities that were more limited for other generations.

Yes, the caller has raised totally valid points. That is the case, that individual baby boomers did not experience the collective benefits that the baby boom itself did, and that there were these moments of immense trauma. That's absolutely the case, but none of that diminishes the fact that the baby boom, again, speaking collectively had a different experience than other generations. I do want to highlight one point from the last caller who said that they were the ones pushing back against the establishment at the time. That's absolutely right. They were. They broke the establishment, both by virtue of activism, and by virtue of scale, and then they became the establishment to your point, Brian.

Now they are the ones who have for so long been driving. They began driving while America was doing well before their parents did by virtue of scale, and now they are the ones driving what America is doing. Part of what we're seeing in the moment is a backlash to that from a new rising large younger generation of people.

Brian Lehrer: One more boomer call. Neil in Plainfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Neil.

Neil: Hi, Brian, thank you for taking my call. It's always a pleasure to listen to you and pleasure to talk to you. I am so disappointed in my generation. I was in college in late '60s and early '70s and I thought our generation was going to change the world. In reality, we didn't, if anything, we've made it worse. You look at politics today, which is pretty much driven mostly by the boomers at this point, how fractious it is. You look at the economy and how unfair it is to lower-income people and people of color. While there are certainly things that are better, civil rights are certainly an improvement, and things like that, the overall-

Brian Lehrer: Trajectory.

Neil: Trajectory, is negative. I'm just so disappointed we were so idealistic and it's a bummer.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a theory Neil as to why it changed?

Neil: No, I wish I did. I guess if I had a reason-

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Go ahead, sorry.

Neil: I would maybe have some of the solution. I do think that a lot of us did become much more selfish than we thought we were.

Brian Lehrer: Neil, thank you very much. Philip, let's end on this coming out of that call. Do you see a multi-generational political trend in any direction? Is each generation getting progressively more progressive, or do we see a recurring pattern of progressive when young, more conservative when you get older, and you have more of a stake in the economy or whatever the status quo is at that time? Is there a multigenerational trend that transcends that, or do you think based on all your research that we're just seeing these cycles of politics based on age?

Philip Bump: The way I always answer questions along those lines of what politics is going to look like, particularly given that younger Americans are so much more heavily Democratic than our older Americans. Is by pointing out that we really don't have a long period of social science research or polling to look at to answer this question. Polling itself is not terribly old. Social science research, it's really robust and reliable, isn't that old. It's hard to say in the United States, the extent to which it is true, this idea that you get more conservative as you age. Certainly, it is the case with many baby boomers that happened to them.

There's also very good research that shows that a lot of people's political views are formed at a fairly young age 14 to 24, somewhere in that age range. Based in large part on who's president at the time, that actually correlates to later partisanship. I think the central question here, and one of the central questions on the book is, what does it mean that younger Americans are so much more diverse than older Americans? I don't think it's safe to assume, for example, that even if it were the case that younger Americans become more conservative as they get older. Assuming there's some non-malleable definition of conservative, which I also think isn't the case. Assuming that that was the pattern that existed, I don't think we can assume that about this generation simply because there's so much more diverse.

There's so many more of them who are Hispanic or Asian or Black than was the case for baby boomers and other older generations. I think that any expectation we have ought to be set aside simply by virtue of the fact that America has changed demographically to the extent, that we just simply see these groups. That all age groups vote much more heavily Democratic than do other Americans. We see that this is being the next group of people that's going to become that older generation and I think that throws everything out the window.

Brian Lehrer: Philip Bump, Washington Post columnist. His new book is The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Phillip, thank you so much.

Philip Bump: Thank you, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.