In 1991 the demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss published their awkwardly-titled tome "13th Gen," about Generation X — the Americans born between 1961 and 1981. If Xers had paid attention they would have committed suicide.
"Child poverty, employment, wages, home ownership, arrest records — in every category, this generation, the 13th since the American Revolution, is doing worse than the generation that came before," New York Times book critic Andrew Leonard wrote at the time. "Indeed, for the first time since the Civil War, the authors of '13th Gen' keep reminding us, young people are unlikely to surpass the affluence of their parents."
Tellingly, the Times titled Leonard's review "The Boomers' Babies" as though their relationship to The Only Generation That Mattered at the time was their status as offspring. Which, equally tellingly, was incorrect. Most Xers' parents belong to the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1940s and 1950s, not the Boom.