OP-ED: The Kids Are Alright. But Their Parents ..., By Neil Howe, Washington Post, December 7, 2008; Page B01

Howe is always interesting. Used his latest (Greying of Great Powers) in Great Powers. This is the counter-intuitive take on the next generation allegedly being so stupid, pinning that tag on my own Generation Jones (ouch!). It's a statistical argument based on test scores and degrees and what not. The serious analysis that fits me to a T:

So what explains the smartness deficit (and the related income gap) that has tracked these early Xers throughout their lives? Some say it's demographic pressure. Early Xers were born into large families at the tail end of the baby boom, with a relatively large share of higher-order siblings (just as first-wave boomers have a relatively large share of first-borns). As they grew up, they got crowded out in the competition for parental attention, good teachers and good colleges. Later on, by the 1980s, they arrived too late to enter the most lucrative professions and the cushiest corporations, by now glutted with boomer yuppies. Their only alternative was to pioneer the pragmatic, free-agent, low-credential lifestyle for which Generation X has since become famous.

It's hard to explain to people what it was like to trail the boom: every seat seemed already taken, so my generation either lacked ambition in the face of all that stiff demographic competition or played it safe. In short, going to college in the early 1980s meant you were really nervous about getting a job. Haven't had that notion in American society again until . . . now. So we were the last generation before the Long Boom, making us a weird blip between the good-life Boomers and what came after. We were X before it had a name. (Thanks: Michael Griffin)