This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you hear weekday afternoons on the Drive. Doctor Jane Twingey is a PhD and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author of more than one hundred scientific publications, the latest of which is really easy to understand, and I think it's important that you do understand it. It's called Generations, the real differences between Gen Z Millennials, Gen X Boomers, and silence and what they mean
for America's future. Doctor Jeane Twingey. I love this kind of stuff because I study it all the time in my business, and I think you've taken this and made it more manageable for people to understand. Yeah, that's that's really the goal here is to help the generations understand each other better by trying to find as much information as possible and what those differences really are, not
going on the mists or the observations, but really digging into it. Lovely wife and I have an argument all the time, and that is she was born in nineteen sixty four, I nineteen sixty six. She loves to claim that she is a baby boomer, and I have to tell her, well, yeah, technically you are, but you have the sensibilities of a gen xer like me. Let's get into you know, how these generations are defined
and why. Yeah, so it is true that by the technical definition, baby boomers are those born between nineteen forty six nineteen sixty four, and then Gen X nineteen sixty five to nineteen seventy nine. But of course you're right, you know, depending on where you grow up, and especially if you're right near one of those caught offs, you may have more of the characteristics
of the other generation. Yeah. For instance, a lovely wife doesn't remember watching Gilligan's Island in prime time, but that's because she was in her family was stationed over in Europe for the first ten years of her life. Yeah, but does she remember the Brady Bunch? That's what we are. Ah, yes, yes, I remember the Brady Bunch. But I was small when I when I saw the Brady Bunch. So Jean twenty is with us. She is the author of the book Generations, The Real Differences between Gen
Z Millennials, gen X Boomers, and Silence. Let's get into what these silence are as. The silence are born nineteen twenty five to nineteen forty five, so they were the leaders of the civil rights movement and the feminist movement. So Martin Luther King Junior, Ruth Vader Ginsberger two members of that generation. So their name is a little bit of a misnomer. Well, how
do they differ then, from the greatest Generation? So the greatest generation is those born nineteen o one to nineteen twenty four, So they were the ones who fought World War two and save the world from save the world from destruction in many ways. Absolutely, there are very few of them, laughed. So now our senior citizens are the silent generation and the upper our older end
of the Baby Boomers. So then the baby Boomers, that's the one that seems to get all the attention, at least up until a few years ago. Yeah. So baby Boomers are just the very large generation. That's what they get their name from, and as a result, they have really dominated the culture at at pretty much every stage of their life cycle. But they're
starting to retire. It's starting to change some although a lot of our political leaders are still boomers, who then usually gave birth to the gen xers, but also millennials. Because I keep seeing studies that the boomers are the first generation to have multiple families. Well, it is true, the divorce eight
is fairly high for boomers. That has really started by the Silent generation, and just yeah, a lot of a lot of more instability in relationships that started to occur, especially with during the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, and then millennials, contrary to popular perception, have higher household incomes. But I would I would say that's because they are getting paid more than the boomers did for
the same kind of work. Well, we can look at say median household income collected by the US Census, and yeah, twenty five to forty four year olds are have higher incomes even corrected for inflation. So that takes into account the cost of housing and healthcare and TVs and cars and everything. And that's partially because after to the Great Recession, which is very tough on millennials, the economy really rowed back. And now now we have a labor shortage
because a lot of the baby boomers are retiring. So even though inflation has also been high, a lot of young people have been able to get very good, high paying jobs. Well, and then there's this interesting thing about the gen xers because there's fewer of them than the boomers and fewer of them than millennials. Yep. So gen X is nineteen sixty five to nineteen seventy
nine and often forgotten. Gen X is the middle child of generation sandwiches between boomers and millennials, often having to mediate between those two mediate in which ways. Well, a lot of times in the workplace, gen X kind of can understand the perspective of both the boomers and the millennials. Sometimes in politics, with a lot of Boomer leaders and Gen X coming up and with a lot of the younger millennials, so there's some political gaps there which are already
interesting will become more so. I also wonder if the millennial generation has more income because they don't seem to spend a lot of money on material things. For instance, China patterns for a wedding present. You don't see the millennials buying those. You don't see millennials buying expensive jewelry. You don't see millennials spending lots of money on a car. Well, they do, they do
buy cars that just about the same rate. But I think a lot of millennials will tell you they're they're spending that money on rent or you know, saving up for a house, although others would say, you know, I want to spend my money on experiences instead of on things. And as far as the workplace right now, are we we're seeing boomers come back into the workplace from retirement because of our work shortage or are we seeing more gen xers?
Are we seeing more millennials? Well, we're seeing some of both. I mean the so called Great Resignation which has taken place over the last two years. A lot of that was boomers retiring on the early side, and a few of them have come back because of the labor shortages that we have. But really what that's done has opened up a lot of opportunities, particularly for millennials. And we haven't talked about gen Z. What did your study
of these generations come across with gen Z? So gen zs those born nineteen ninety five to twenty twelve, So they're kids, teens, young adults, and they are the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone, and that had a lot of rip effects across many areas of their lives. So they also spend less time with friends in person, and that might be one reason why they have very high levels of anxiety and depression.
Doctor Jean Twine is with us and the Bookist Generations, the real differences between Gen Z Millennials, gen X Boomers, and Silence and what they mean for America's future. It's a fascinating read and if you want to understand pop culture and today's world, I would highly recommend it, at least as a
summer read. I thank you for joining us, Thank you thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and I Hearts Media presentation