Generation X - United States

United States

Generation Xers have cultural perspectives and political experiences that were shaped by a series of events. These include the election of Ronald Reagan, the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the Baby Jessica rescue, Black Monday, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the election of George H.W. Bush, the launch of the Hubble Telescope, the savings and loan crisis, the election of Bill Clinton and the 1990s economic boom, the longest recorded expansion of GDP in the history of the United States.

Generation X experienced the introduction of the personal computer, the start of the video game era, cable television and the Internet. Other events include the AIDS epidemic, the War on Drugs, the Iran hostage crisis, the Persian Gulf War, the Dot-com bubble, grunge, alternative rock and hip hop. They were often called the MTV Generation. Pertinent to a non-partisan study on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, the Population Reference Bureau, a demographic research organization based in Washington, D.C., cited Generation X birth years as falling between 1965-1982.

In the preface to Generation X Goes Global: Mapping a Youth Culture in Motion, a collection of global essays, Professor Christine Henseler summarizes it as "a generation whose worldview is based on change, on the need to combat corruption, dictatorships, abuse, AIDS, a generation in search of human dignity and individual freedom, the need for stability, love, tolerance, and human rights for all."

In American cinema, directors Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater and Todd Solondz have been called Generation X filmmakers. Smith is most known for his View Askewniverse films, the flagship film being Clerks, which focused on a pair of bored, twenty-something convenience store clerks in New Jersey circa 1994; Linklater's Slacker similarly explored young adult characters who were more interested in philosophizing than settling with a long-term career and family; Solondz' Welcome to the Dollhouse touched upon themes of school bullying, school violence, teen drug use, peer pressure and broken or dysfunctional families, mostly set in a junior high school environment during the early to mid-1990s.

Compared with previous generations, Generation X represents a more heterogeneous generation, exhibiting great variety of diversity in such aspects as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Change is more the rule for the people of Generation X than the exception. Unlike their parents who challenged leaders with an intent to replace them, Gen Xers tend to ignore leaders and work for more long term institutional and systematic change through economic, media and consumer actions.

The U.S. Census Bureau cites Generation X as highly educated, statistically holding the highest education levels when looking at current age groups: U.S. Census Bureau, in their 2009 Statistical Abstract.

In economics, a study (done by Pew Charitable Trusts, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Urban Institute) challenged the notion that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it. The study, 'Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well?" focuses on the income of males 30-39 in 2004 (those born April, 1964 – March, 1974) and is based on Census/BLS CPS March supplement data.

The study, released on May 25, 2007, emphasized that in real dollars, this generation's men made less (by 12%) than their fathers had at that same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. The study also suggests that per year increases in the portion of father/son family household income generated by fathers/sons have slowed (from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%), barely keeping pace with inflation, though increases in overall father/son family household income are progressively higher each year because more women are entering the workplace, contributing to family household income if they're married or cohabitating.

The 2011 publication "The Generation X Report", based on annual surveys used in the Longitudinal Study of today's adults, finds that Gen Xers, who are defined in the report as people born between 1961 and 1981, are highly educated, active, balanced, happy and family-oriented. The study dispels the materialistic, slacker, disenfranchised stereotype associated with youth in the 1970 and 80s. Various questions and responses from approximately 4,000 people who were surveyed each year from 1987 through 2010 made up the study.

In 2008, Details magazine editor-at-large Jeff Gordinier released his book X Saves the World -- How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking.