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Advertisements have extolled the rise of the two-salary couple with educated tastes, discretionary income and the willingness to spend it. The image does not square with the facts: the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that young families in 1983 spent 18% less of their budget on home furnishings and 32% less on clothes than young families in 1973. There is, to be sure, a so-called superclass of high-living yuppies, as young urban professional Baby Boomers were dubbed by Syndicated Columnist Bob Greene in early 1983. But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only about 4.5 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 40 make more than $35,000 a year. More than six times as many--some 30 million Baby Boomers--make less than $15,000 a year. "I see a lot of people using their credit cards and getting into debt," says Mern Wildcat, 30, who has an eight-year-old son and works on an assembly line for the King Radio corporation in Olathe, Kans. "People want a home, two cars and all the new technologies, like VCRs, but it's hard to afford it all."
Though the Baby Boomers have spurred the growth of the black middle class, there are as well an increasing number of unwed black mothers in the Baby Boom generation who must support their children on a pittance. "When you talk about two-parent families," says Frank Levy of the Urban Institute, "blacks have made gains in closing the gap on whites." The median income for a black family headed by a married couple ages 35 to 44 was $29,908 in 1983, not far behind the $35,600 average for whites. But the 43% of black households headed by women ages 35 to 44 earned an average of only $10,480.
Sacrifice and lowered expectations do not come naturally to Baby Boomers. "You deserve a break today," proclaimed a famous McDonald's commercial, and the Baby Boomers believed it. The Depression-era work-and-scrimp ethic that drove their parents was not passed along. Inflation is at least partly to blame, says MONEY Managing Editor Landon Jones, author of Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan). Spiraling costs made savings seem futile and fostered a sensibility of buy now, pay later.
There is a hint of despair to the yuppies' avid consumerism. "If you can't afford a home, you want the best espresso machine you can buy," observes Los Angeles Psychologist Shelley Taylor, 39. Manhattan Ad Executive Julianne Hastings, 39, wears designer clothes and jets off to the Caribbean for vacations. But she lives in an apartment "the same size as the bedroom I grew up in," and confesses, "I don't know anyone who saves now. Probably we're foolish and will all end up on the poor farm."
She may be right. By the year 2030, when the Baby Boomers will have reached old age, 21.2% of the population will be over 65, compared with 12% today. After a life of jogging, aerobics and Lean Cuisine, they will live longer than any generation ever, but who will support them? Providing pensions, health care and housing for this wrinkled cohort "will be as great a challenge as any the nation has ever faced," state Alan Pifer and Lydia Bronte of the Carnegie Corporation's Aging Society Project. Pifer, 65, predicts one major change: the Boomers will sweep away the tradition of retiring at 65 and continue to play a strong role in the workplace. "They are not going to let themselves be put on a shelf," he says.