Q&A: People try to put us down

Bobby Duffy says generations aren’t as different as we think

The World Today Updated 30 July 2021 3 minute READ

Bobby Duffy

Professor of Public Policy; Director of The Policy Institute, King's College London

You seek to dispel the myths surrounding generational divides why?

For the past 15 to 20 years, I have been researching what is really different between generations and I came to the realization that we mess up because we think that each particular generation is different from the last.

That is a human characteristic – to think that the world is going to change much more than it really will. The changes that we see as individuals and as society are affected by generations but also propelled by ‘period effects’ – what is going on at the time – which impact the whole society as we have seen with the pandemic.

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