Abstract
For American baby boomers, altered demographic behavior has been the key to transforming adverse labor market conditions into favorable living levels. The economic well-being of baby boomers is, on average, higher than that of their predecessors, because they are disproportionately remaining single, having fewer children, doubling up with others, forming unmarried couple unions, and coupling mother's work with childbearing. In the 1980s, baby boomers share in common with all cohorts an increase in income inequality. In contrast to the findings on average income, demographic changes had little effect on the trend in inequality of economic well-being compared with that in earnings.
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Toronto, Canada, May 3, 1990. The authors are grateful to Donna Hokoda for excellent assistance and to the University of Southern California for financial support. Support for Easterlin was also provided by a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1988–1989. The uniform file prepared by Mare and Winship (1985) was used for the 1965 Current Population Survey data reported here.
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Easterlin, R.A., Macdonald, C. & Macunovich, D.J. How have American baby boomers fared? Earnings and economic well-being of young adults, 1964–1987. J Popul Econ 3, 277–290 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00179337
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00179337