Culture notes: Bad deal in the generation game

In advanced economies the attitudes, comportments, preferences, responsibilities and needs – current and future – of younger generations are at the heart of politics.

Some argue that we are making too much of all of this – too much of ‘generations’ as a category; and too much of the distinct challenges that both Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) will face.

But working through the prism of generations enables us to tell the story of who we are – or who we imagine ourselves to be – and this is both inevitable and invaluable.

Also, harrumphing against Millennials et al may once have been fashionable, but the well-documented toll taken by the pandemic on the young – mentally, educationally, socially and financially – has, thankfully, largely shut down the stiff-upper-lip brigade.