We as humans go through phases in our existence and characterize phases as timelines, such as the Stone Age, Ice Age, and Age of Civilization. Humans have cultivated, invented, and evidently found new ways to develop our understanding of the world around us to shape the desires to what people want them to be. Therefore, humans tend to unwillingly want to continue their pursuit for leaving an impression on the world. Timelines are not only characterized by significant phases in species’ evolution, but are also classified by each generation demographically by the years at which they were brought up in. This can be seen in categories such as the Lost Generation, millenials or Baby Boomers, and these categories all affect each other. Baby Boomers have heavily impacted millenials not only in the present, but also in the past through their economic decisions and trends.

To understand the research question, one must first know the exact definition of “Baby Boomer” and “Millennial.” Baby Boomers are a generation which was born and raised in the 1950s and 1960s, and which was born after the Great Depression and the Second World War (Van Bevel 257). According to Van Bevel, the rate of fertility was low in the 1930s and 1940s during these world events. After the end of the Second World War, as the world started to settle from the chaos, the fertility rates increased at a high incidence which was referred to as the baby boom (Van Bevel 259). Millennials (Generation Y) are a generation born between the years of 1980 and 1995, and they are the mostly children of the Baby Boomers, the preceding generation (Ng 283). 

Along with the relevant generations, one also needs to know the environment of which these two generations grew or are growing up in. The Baby Boomers are the children of the Lost Generation, whose parents were involved the Second World War and the Great Depression. Due to a dramatic increase in fertility in the late 1940s, the Baby Boomers represented a huge market where the demands of the increasing population kept growing (Yang 269). As the demand to keep up with the population growth increased, the environment around schools changed drastically as well, which led to an increase in overcrowded classrooms and, due to the large volume of applicants, to newly competitive college admissions (Yang 270). According to Yang, Baby Boomers are often described as independent and anti-authoritarian.  As they reached adulthood, key world events occurred in the world, such as the successful mission to land on the moon. This instilled self-confidence that propelled their commitment to change the world.  They also witnessed the rise of the hippie culture, the enactment of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the dramatic change in the roles to which women impact society.

Millennials are the children of the Baby Boomers, meaning that they are the generation which succeeds the Baby Boomers. The Millennials are growing up in a more a stable environment compared to what the Baby Boomers went through. They have been growing up with significant advancements in science and technology where technology plays an important role to Millennials everywhere (Yang 270). With the development of social networking sites, Millennials are used to the rapid flow of information from all around the world. With more priority given to education due increased educational access and importance during 1980s and 1990s, Millennials are highly qualified regarding education. Many Boomers tend to classify the Millennials as a generation that is too soft because Millennials grew up in a school system where they were handed all the accomplishments without doing anything compared to the Boomers who had to fight for every achievement they earned (Frimston). 

Due to growing up after various social change, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Millennials have an increased tolerance towards all cultural backgrounds. Although the concept of education and the quality of education has increased, the cost of living has also risen due the economy tumbling down after the September 11th attacks in 2001 and the recession in 2007. Access to highly paid jobs has become limited, and due to this and high living costs, both poverty and unemployment have climbed from previouly low percentages.

After describing the situations in which each generation grew up, this paper will now focus on proving whether the boomers have significantly impacted Millennials through economic means. During the time in which the Baby Boomers grew up, the economy was growing at a fast pace with the increased level of schooling, growth in food production and the lowering in the proportion of people in poverty (Easterlin 287). This was due to the increasing rate in the population. The economic success of Baby Boomers came from the fact that they had drastic changes in their demographic behaviors by having fewer children and focusing more on their work lives instead of taking care of their families. Women were also influential to the growth of the economy because they were given bigger roles in high paying jobs which led to an increase in their versatility at any workplace. With the Civil Rights Movement, the roles of African Americans at workplaces grew larger through improved job accessibility, which also contributed to the increase in the growth of the economy.

In a research paper written by Norman B Ryder in 1979, one can understand what the Baby Boomers expected at their primes and what the world will become with the leadership of their children who would later be known as the Millennials. It is stated that a generation belongs to a small cohort (i.e. the size of the generation), which means in the years in which fertility is low, that generation is expected to fare well in the labor market, tending them to later increase the level of fertility. Generations which belonged to a large cohort tend to have lower rates of fertility, causing an infinite cycle of higher-then-lower-then-higher rates of fertility (Ryder 360). For a generation to be prosperous economically, the cohort size must be large enough that the increase in the population will lead to more competition, thus providing more opportunity to a particular generation. Ryder postulates in this paper that due to decreasing population in the 1970s, future cohort sizes would also get smaller as fertility declined. The economic progress in the world also kept dropping which would lead to higher living costs. 

Although this paper mostly talks about futuristic probabilities of the world from the point of view of Baby Boomers in the 1970s, through recent evidence, it can be said that the thesis Ryder had proposed has been correct so far. It may seem that the Millennials are destined for success as they are driven to achieve great accomplishments in life (Levenson 257). However, compared to the past Millennials are more educated than the Baby Boomers by getting more degrees in 4-year universities, but the cost of education in a university has substantially risen. Education costs have risen due to lower fertility rates of Millennials compared to Baby Boomers, and due to the crippling economy for the past ten years (Levenson 258). With the cost of education rising, students tend to make use of the financial aid system where they pay off their tuition fees from their wages, and this leaves students with a significant amount of student debt. This section so far proves that the Boomers were right in predicting the downward trend in the economy, but the effects of this downward are mitigated in part by the increased workplace where African Americans and women play a significant role in workplaces around the country, therefore undermining Ryder’s previously mentioned thesis.

According to Beckers’ paper, it’s said that Baby Boomers played a significant role in the downward trends in the economy that directly affects the Millennials in the world today. Becker stated that there were two ways to which the boomers have affected the Millennials: the unsustainable use of the earth’s resources and the adverse and devastating effects on the worlds’ ecosystem. Earth's ecology and environment also play a significant role in the economy where the workforce is impacted by the change in climate, which impacts the economy substantially. The Baby Boomers grew up in a thriving economy where development in industrialism grew, and they took in no consideration the ecological and economic impacts that would arise to the future generations. With that knowledge in mind, it can be concluded that the Baby Boomers were solely misguided by the potential wealth they were to obtain and they simply did not care about struggles their children (Millennials) would encounter in the future.

The Baby Boomers have not only contributed significantly towards the environmental struggles Millennials are facing today, but they have also influenced the society on a grand scale to which they mainly control the labor market and the economy. An article written by Steven Russolillo on the Wall Street Journal concerning the uneven recovery of jobs between Millennials and Baby Boomers shows readers the facts and scale of this generation inequality in the labor front. The article confirmed that there is a significant difference between the Millennials and the Baby Boomers by using an example of the population-employment ratio models for both the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. With the data acquired from the Millennial model, the population-employment ratio dropped significantly from 2000 till 2010, where it decreased from approximately 60% to 45%. The population-employment ratio has steadily increased since then—it has risen from 45% in 2010 to 50% in 2016. For the Boomers, the model was surprisingly different from the model for the Millennials. It shows that the Baby Boomers’ population-employment ratio has not depleted significantly but has been steadily increasing since the year of 2000, where it grew from approximately 57.5% to 62% through 2016. From this article, it can be concluded that the boomers’ have too great of an influence on the economic climate and they will not lose and hand over power to the Millennials. Evidently, the Millennials are suffering the most because the Millennials are mostly educated in 4-year universities to get into the labor markets, leaving them in student debt which worsens the situation they are living in. 

To understand the situation in which the Baby Boomers are affecting the Millennials, it is only logical to get a right perspective from both the generations. According to the TEDx talk by Kelly William Brown, there is a discussion on why the Millennials are the worst generation. She discusses the issue where the Baby Boomers refer to the Millennials as a spoiled generation who tend to climb the Himalayas instead of climbing the corporate ladder which indicates that the Millennials often tend to pursue their wants instead of focusing on their needs. But Kelly stated that the reason why the Millennials are spoiled in the first place was that that the boomers were the main the reason: they spoiled their children. This makes the Boomers’ original argument contradictory. Kelly discusses that the workplace attitudes between the Millennials and the Boomers are often mischaracterized in the way the Boomers employ the Millennials. The mischaracterization comes from the factor of experience in the workforce where employers, who tend to be Boomers, often scout for applicants who are more experienced, and this which leads to Millennials who have recently graduated from universities finding it difficult to obtain jobs. During the period when Millennials went through high school, they were introduced to a working model, where they were told that the key to living a life where they can earn a healthy living was first introduced to the Millennials by the boomers themselves. 

In a YouTube debate titled “How the boomers screwed up the Millennials,” there was a discussion on the perspective of a Boomer. In the debate, the Boomers admitted that they negatively affected the Millennials, but they also expressed that were not entirely at fault for the struggles Millennials face today (Pajamasmedia). It was also discussed that the Millennials are too sympathetic and soft without making bold and correct decisions in life, which makes it harder for the boomers to hand over their leadership to the Millennials. They evidently concluded that the Millennials need to toughen up and face the situation of a predatory market where the boomers clearly control and to overcome it to make the world a better place.

This research paper has discussed many factors that describe how different Millennials and Baby Boomers are regarding economic progression. Many of the factors which affect their differences come from the social and economic environment they grew up in, where the Baby Boomers grew up in an ever expanding and stable economic climate, while the Millennials are growing up in an ever-changing and unstable economic climate. After doing extensive research, it can be concluded that the Baby Boomers contributed significantly towards the struggles Millennials face today in terms of the economy. They have destroyed the environment and left behind an eco-system which is slowly dying, which in turn affects the economy, and they have taken over and controlled the economy to the point where they are not affected at all by financial disasters over the past 16 years. They do not tend to hand over their leadership roles to Millennials as they have a misperception that the Millennials are spoiled and that they won’t be able to the jobs as well as they can. The Millennials are the generation which is suffering greatly from this action, but Millennials are known as a generation who are morally driven to succeed in the world and will not back down from the challenge of making this world a better and fairer place for everyone. Better and much more effectively than the baby boomers.
