Not that long ago, a young British journalist called Jane Deverson travelled around the UK interviewing teenagers for a women’s magazine. She asked them frankly about their “hates and hopes and fears”, touching on marriage, politics, music, travel, drink, drugs, religion, raves, sex, idols “and anything else they wanted to talk about”.

One 18-year-old told her, “You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to tell you what to do.” Another teenager said: “Our elders and betters do not inspire us, do not give us the slightest incentive to be as they are.” Another said his life would probably be quite futile. “Most lives are. But then the general prospects for the future are not too bright, are they? The human race seems to have made a right old mess of things, hasn’t it?”

It was all too easy to sneer at the growing pains of youth, Deverson later said, “to dismiss their very real predicaments with the tired truism, ‘So every generation has its special problems – so what?’ But the problems of today’s young are more acutely special than ever before.” Her observations could have been made yesterday. They were published in 1964, in one of the first contemporary examinations of a supposedly hard-done-by younger group pushing back against their selfish, stuffy elders.

Sixty-one years later, the notion of generational differences – and, particularly, inequality between them – is well entrenched. Millennials spar with Gen Zs on TikTok about everything from socks to Harry Potter. “Boomers” are typically seen by anyone as having unfairly enjoyed unimaginable privileges such as cheap housing and free tertiary education while failing to ensure young people’s access to stable jobs and desirable inner city real estate.

Yet as time passes and the oldest Baby Boomers (on the cusp of 80) start to slip off the perch, youth is inevitably ascendant. It’s a fact not lost on the major political parties, whose headline housing policies for next week’s federal election are transparently courting younger electors, as their (Boomer and Gen X) leaders try to communicate (often somewhat awkwardly) using TikTok clips, podcasts with influencers and even DJ sets in nightclubs.

How relevant are generational divides? Are you defined by your birth year any more than by your horoscope? How will the “generation gap” influence the federal election?

Who put the ‘boom’ in Boomers?

In the US, before World War II, there were about 2.4 million babies born each year; after peace was declared in 1945, the annual birth rate soared, hitting some 4 million or more in 1954 – a boom that lasted nearly 20 years. Having five or six kids was not uncommon. This baby glut, bringing into the world some 70 million new people, was a demographic phenomenon.

But it was not until much later that the group it comprised was characterised as a “generation” and given a name, the Baby Boomers. The term, popularised in the 1980 book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation by magazine editor Landon Jones, sparked a popular interest in the notion of generations, and the idea that cohorts of people would share similar views and experiences but differ somehow from other cohorts born before or after them. “The Baby Boom generation – that was probably the first time that earnest talk of generational shifts was brought into the mainstream,” says Liz Allen, a demographer and social researcher at the Australian National University.

Jones bookended the Boomers between 1946 and 1964, when the population spike began to tail off. Not everybody agreed with Jones: William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of the oft-cited 1991 book Generations: the History of America’s Future, believed the Boomer generation should start in 1943 and end in 1960. They were less concerned with the precise end of the war and more interested in the character-forming historical landmarks its members would have witnessed: Kennedy’s assassination, men walking on the moon, the Vietnam War, flower power, civil rights, and so on. The youngest of this group, they argued in The Atlantic, were “the last-born of today’s Americans to feel any affinity with the hippie-cum-yuppie baggage that accompanies the Boomer label.”

Nevertheless, Jones’ range is generally accepted today, as recognised by the US Census Bureau. Other generations haven’t been so cut and dried. (For this article, we are referring to the generally accepted date ranges for each generation, as used by the Pew Research Centre in the United States and others, and the most commonly used labels.)

Strauss and Howe thought, for example, the generation following the Boomers – then in their 20s – should be known as “Generation 13”, or “Thirteeners”, being the 13th iteration since American independence in 1776. This complicated definition didn’t catch on. Nor did “Baby Busters”, “MTV Generation”, “Latchkey Generation”, or “Posties” (“post yuppies”).

Instead, the name that came to describe those born between 1965 and 1980 was popularised by Canadian author Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. It’s a story about a group of friends muddling through life after quitting their careers, paying their bills by working lowly “McJobs” (another term Coupland popularised) that somehow resonated and ended up defining a generation of “slackers”. (Slightly confusingly, this wasn’t the first time the term had emerged, though it hadn’t stuck before. The celebrated war photographer Robert Capa used it to describe the young people who came of age immediately after WWII. Deverson called her disaffected British youth “Generation X” in the book she later co-wrote with Charles Hamblett, to suggest unknowability, though the youths she interviewed were actually mostly young Baby Boomers. And it was the name of punk rocker Billy Idol’s band, formed in 1976, and their first album.)

Who came next (and what’s Generation Jones)?

After Gen X, there was an attempt at alphabetical continuity with the next generation: Millennials (born 1981-96) were initially widely dubbed “Gen Y”. There were also optimistic attempts to tag them as “Echo Boomers” (children of the Boomer generation) and even “The Tamagotchi Generation”, referencing the popular electronic toy of their era (an egg-shaped device containing a digital creature that had to be nurtured).

Generation Z (born 1997-2012) might have been called “iGen” (referencing the iPhone), “Centennials” (referencing the turn of the century) or “Zoomers”, a throwback to the Boomers. Next to come of age will be Generation Alpha, starting with those born in 2013 and sometimes called the “Corona Generation” for the formative experience of living through the pandemic.

Way back in time, we had the Lost Generation (born 1883-1900), a generation of young men lost to the trenches; the Greatest Generation (1901-27), so called because they resolutely survived the Depression and fought in WWII; and the oddly named Silent Generation (1928-45), so defined by Time magazine in 1951 to suggest its members were cowed conformists, although they included the likes of the rather non-silent Gloria Steinem, Muhammad Ali, Nina Simone, Martin Luther King Jr, Billie Jean King, Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. Dylan, although born in 1941, was often thought of as the voice of the Baby Boomer generation. “I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of,” he wrote in a memoir.

Curiously, there have also been attempts to introduce into the mix what you might call microgenerations – cohorts that don’t quite fit with the main group or seem to straddle eras. One of the best known is “Generation Jones”, dreamed up by US cultural commentator Jonathan Pontell as a play on “keeping up with the Joneses”. This Boomer sub-generation (1954-65) grew up facing much harsher economic times than the first wave of Boomers, hence their striving to keep up – or its flipside, a proto-Gen X attitude of not really bothering too much. “If the zeitgeist of the Boomers was optimism and revolution,” writes Jennifer Finney Boylan in The New York Times, “the vibe of Gen Jones was cynicism and disappointment.”

Another tweener generation, the “Xennials”, appeared between 1977 and 1983, a blend of late Gen X and early Millennial (also, in the US at least, sometimes called “Generation Catalano”, referencing a character on the popular teen-angst TV show My So-Called Life, which first aired in 1994; and even the “Oregon Trail Generation”, recalling a popular early computer game). Born between 1994 and 1999? You might identify as “Zillennial”.

‘Millennials were called lazy. Now Millennials are in their 30s and 40s, and they’re working hard and trying to raise families.’

Emily Dye, Centre for Independent Studies

This all refers, of course, to English-speaking nations that take their lead from the US. Other countries have their own unique ways of defining generations. The Swedes name each one for the decade of birth: Baby Boomers are the “40-talisters”, meaning “those born” the 1940s, and so on. Older Germans might be known as “Generation 68”, marked by the protest movements that reached their peak that year; so too their contemporaries in France, the “Soix­ante-huit­ards” (68ers). Young Europeans hit by crippling unemployment after the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 might be known as the “Geracao a rasca” (the “Scraping-By Generation”) in Portugal, or “Generation precaire” (“The Precarious Generation”) in France. In Taiwan, meanwhile, older people apparently refer to supposedly work-shy Millennials as the “Strawberry Generation” because they’re meant to bruise easily … their equivalent of our Boomers deriding (easily “triggered”) Millennials as “snowflakes”.

Older generations habitually complain that young people are lazy or unreliable, notes Emilie Dye, a marketing and research analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. “I’ve heard lots to this effect about Gen Z. Really, it’s just that they’re young. They’re in their 20s. They haven’t had experience in the job market yet. Millennials were called lazy. Now Millennials are in their 30s and 40s, and they’re working hard and trying to raise families.”

Since when did generations mean something?

The notion of a generation gap – that young people are intrinsically different, even naturally opposed to their parents – began to be popularised in the 1950s after the invention of the “teenager”. Marlon Brando, playing a motorcycle outlaw in The Wild One (1953), is famously asked, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” He responds with a sneer. “What ya’ got?” A decade later, rock band the Who complained in their hit My Generation that “people try to put us down” and were apparently so disgusted with their elders that they hoped “to die before I get old” (singer Roger Daltrey, now 81, didn’t; drummer Keith Moon sadly did, at just 32). Today’s young tend to dismiss their elders (anybody over 40, even 35) with an eye roll and the dismissive “OK, Boomer”.

Around the start of the 20th century, broad theories about social generations, as opposed to generations within families, began to emerge. French philosopher Francois Mentre (born 1877) came up with his theory of “les generations sociales”, that people from different families were united by a particular mentality shaped by their common experiences. The Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim built on those earlier ideas, in 1928 suggesting in an essay that people not only shared similar defining characteristics shaped by historical events (World War I being particularly cataclysmic) but that influential groups called “generation units” such as writers, politicians and artists would give each generation its distinct identity. Think the Bloomsbury Set, the Romantic poets, the Beatles and the Stones, punks, mods, rockers, hippies, beatniks, rappers, today’s creators on YouTube, wellness influencers on TikTok, and so on.

Yet not everyone buys the notion of “our generation”. Talking about “Gen this” or “Gen that”: can quickly lead to stereotyping, notes Liz Allen. “I like to think of a saying that goes, just because you were raised in the same family doesn’t mean you experienced the same family.” As seen in microgenerations, the limitations of the basic model are plainest at its edges: the very first Boomer, according to a search of birth records around the time of Jones’ book, turned out to be a teacher called Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, who was born seconds after midnight on January 1, 1946, in Philadelphia and, once discovered in the 1980s, became a minor celebrity. Was she so different to a baby born a minute, and therefore a generation, earlier?

Critics also point to the trickiness in teasing out the influence of societal and economic events from the effects of simply growing older – what sociologists separate into “period” (or “life-cycle”) effects and “cohort” effects. Attitudes, priorities and economic status tend to evolve with different life stages: that one-time left-wing student who grows up to be a Liberal-voting landlord. Allen believes the Baby Boomers are the only properly defined generation “because they are clearly bound by, and defined by, demographic change”. “Labels that are assigned to generations outside the Baby Boomer generation are arbitrary,” she says.

‘Knowing what generation you are doesn’t perfectly predict your attitudes and experiences, but it can tell you something about … how you spend your time, and what you become.’

US psychologist and author Jean Twenge

Shaun Ratcliff, principal at social and political research firm Accent Research, agrees that the talk of generations can be over-egged, especially when it comes to Boomers – “someone that’s born in 1946 doesn’t necessarily have a lot in common with someone who was born in 1964” – but they can be a shorthand, too. “If you say, ‘Baby Boomer’, if you say ‘Millennial’, most people know what you’re talking about, so they’re useful concepts.” American psychologist Jean Twenge, author of several “generation” books, agrees. “The generational names and spans may be squishy, but the evidence for generational differences is strong,” she wrote for the Pew Research Centre in 2018. “Knowing what generation you are doesn’t perfectly predict your attitudes and experiences, but it can tell you something about how the culture and events of the time mould what you believe, how you spend your time, and what you become.”

How will this all play out in the federal election?

How to reach a demographic that no longer watches free-to-air TV, reads newspapers or listens to talkback radio? You get creative. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruffled feathers when he invited a group of twenty-something influencers to the budget lock-up in March alongside traditional mainstream media, he’s appeared on a popular youth-oriented podcast, his team posts clips on TikTok, and he even tried out a little Gen Z slang in parliament, calling the opposition “delulu with no sololu” (“delusional with no solution”).

The Liberals made a clip attacking Albanese that referenced Fortnite, a popular video game; Greens’ Gen X leader Adam Bandt, 53, has recently played a couple of DJ sets in Melbourne clubs; and last September independent senator Fatima Payman, 29, gave an ironic speech to parliament deliberately peppered with Gen-Z idiom: “The decision voters will be making in a few months time will be between a mid [mediocre] government and a dog water [trash] opposition or a crossbench that will mog [outclass] both of them.”

Why all the scrabbling to connect with today’s “youf”? Simple: Millennial and Gen Z voters (aged under 45) now outnumber Baby Boomers and older generations (at least, people 60 and over) – 7,805,463 voters to 5,922,040, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. (Australia’s 4.3 million Gen Xers, aged 45 to 60 and perennially ignored by demographers, remain squashed in the middle.) Monash University professor Lucas Walsh describes the shift as a “youthquake”, writing that “the voices of recent generations of Australians are forces to be reckoned with”.

The shift is also a problem for the major parties, particularly the Coalition, says Shaun Ratcliff. Gen Z, in particular, “are much more left-leaning on social issues than any preceding generation on most issues”. The 2022 Australian Election Study, the latest in a long-running survey of voters, noted that support for the Coalition among Millennials and Gen Z collapsed at the last two federal elections (to 25 and 26 per cent, respectively). It concluded: “How the Coalition addresses this overwhelming deficit of support among younger generations is perhaps the single biggest question confronting Australian politics.”

ANU’s Ian McAllister, one of the authors of the report, suggests the explosion in tertiary education in recent decades is a major factor in the growth in the progressive vote among the young, partly because universities tend to be left-wing environments but also because a tertiary education might make young voters better at critical thinking, giving them, he says, “a much clearer ability to place themselves in somebody else’s circumstances and to evaluate what policies could be put in place to improve their situation”.

‘Younger people tended to be more left-wing, and then they got a bit older, they ... move from centre-left to centre-right, to some degree. But what we see among generations Z and Millennials is that they’re not shifting.’

Professor Ian McAllister, ANU

Younger women, in particular, are much more likely to vote on the left, in Australia and internationally. Says Ratcliff: “In particular, LGBTQ+ women are extremely left-wing. And you might go, ‘Well, that’s a small percentage of the population’, but about 20 per cent of Gen Z women identify as LGBTQ+ so it’s a pretty substantial share of the cohort.”

Moreover, says McAllister, members of younger generations are now less likely than previous generations to shift to the right as they grow older. “Traditionally … younger people tended to be more left-wing, and then they got a bit older, they got married and had a mortgage and children and things like that, became a bit more right-wing,” he says. “They move from centre-left to centre-right, to some degree. But what we see among generations Z and Millennials is that they’re not shifting.” Why? “They have lower levels of home ownership, they tend to have less secure jobs and so on. So they’re not getting the economic rewards the previous generations had.”

Liz Allen says this is a failure of the “intergenerational bargain”, the notion that each generation should make sure the next enjoys a better standard of living. “And that’s just not happening on a number of fronts.” The cost of living is the number one issue for younger generations, agrees Emilie Dye, who describes herself as on the cusp of Gen Z. “It’s inflation, it’s housing prices, the job market, it’s just surviving. I think if the right wants to appeal to those young people, they should absolutely focus on practical solutions to make those generations’ lives a little bit better.”

The Greens have been the major beneficiary of this generational friction, says Ratcliff. “The Greens are very popular with Gen Z,” says Dye, “and I think that’s because the Greens do a very good job of identifying the problems. The Coalition, if they want to have long-term success, needs to look at those practical concerns of young people and not dismiss them as, ‘Oh, young people who spend all their money on avocado toast.’”

‘I don’t think either of the major parties will do anything substantial, it’s more like which party will do less harm.’

First-time voter Jessica Flett

A Resolve Political Monitor survey published earlier this month showed only 56 per cent of those aged between 18 and 35 backed one of the two major parties, compared to 74 per cent support among the over-55s. “It’s no wonder this group is voting for change via minor parties and independents, and staying there for longer than they used to,” says Jim Reed, who conducts the Resolve Political Monitor for this masthead. “They don’t see solutions coming from the major parties.”

A typical remark from the younger voters we interviewed for this story came from Taylor Westlake, 31, from Coogee: “I’ve kind of lost faith in both major political parties.” Ditto, says student and first-time voter Jessica Flett, 18, from Melbourne. “I don’t think either of the major parties will do anything substantial, it’s more like which party will do less harm.” She considers violence against women, climate change and Indigenous rights among the most important election issues.

“I think the domestic violence issue is really prominent at the moment,” agrees Jessi-May Healey, 25, a Pilates studio manager from Geelong West. “I know that the government is trying with mental health, but I think there needs to be more action around that. [My vote will] depend on how much money they’ve put into mental health and domestic violence, and also what they do about the housing crisis as well.” For Claire Gaspar, 25, an arts worker in Redfern, it’s also about affordable housing – her rental “is falling apart” – and the cost of living. “Being a casual right now is really tricky … I’m not getting enough hours to pay my rent, and I’m struggling to find another job.”

Older and younger generations occupy some common ground, not only on cost of living but also on climate. “Denialism seems to be coming a lot more in vogue,” says Roger Yandle, 71, from the Hunter Valley, one of several Baby Boomers who shared their thoughts with us. “My concerns about that, I guess, have got worse rather than better.” Esme van der Schee, 65, from Maribyrnong, is concerned for her adult children. “I’m worried about it because they don’t have an extravagant lifestyle, and they have savings, but there’s not a lot of opportunity like there was opportunity in my generation.”

Margaret Heanes, 72, from the Hunter Valley, derides “the opposition’s almost evangelical push for nuclear power”. “That scares the pants off me. It’s just appealing to the people who want a simple solution and don’t really believe in climate change and just want something that’s going to keep their bills down. Well, it probably won’t.”

Alison Barr, from Rowville in Victoria, has seen a lot. At 93, a member of the Silent Generation, born in the middle of the Great Depression, she remembers rationing in World War II, seeing her first plane, schools shutting during the infant polio epidemic, and the first mass vaccinations for children. “I think quite a lot of my generation, you know, are really quite fearful for the world we’re leaving,” she says. “I’ve now got great-grandchildren, and I greeted the first one saying, ‘I wish he was coming into a world that we’d cared for better.’”

With interviews also by Brittany Busch and Penry Buckley

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