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GEOFF BENNETT: The
impact of the Baby Boom
generation is impossible
to ignore. The roughly

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76 million people born between
1946 and 1964 have reshaped
American society at each stage

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of their lives, crowding
American classrooms
in the '50s and '60s,
filling the labor and

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housing markets decades
later, ultimately leaving
their imprint on our
politics and institutions.

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Philip Bump is a national
columnist for The Washington
Post. And he takes

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a closer look at the
generation's impact. His
book is "The Aftermath:

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The Last Days of the
Baby Boom and the Future
of Power in America."

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Phil Bump joins us now.

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It's great to have you here.

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And when we talk about
the Baby Boom generation,

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we're talking about the 76
million people that were born
during that 19-year span.

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Their influence is really
stitched into the fabric
of modern-day America.

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And you borrow an analogy
in the book. You say:

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"When the Boomers entered
the world, it was like a
python swallowing a pig."

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In what way? Why is
that a fitting analogy?

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PHILIP BUMP, Author,
"The Aftermath: The Last
Days of the Baby Boom and

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the Future of Power in
America": Well, I mean, it's
certainly not a charming one.

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But it is fitting, in the
sense that you can imagine very
easily this fairly narrow python

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that all of a sudden has this
huge bulge in it. Not only does
it have a huge bulge in it,

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but the bulge has to sort of
work its way through the system.

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And so your point about the
76 million people being born,

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the population of the
United States in 1945 was
only 140 million. So it
is this massive increase,

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particularly in young
people right at the outset
of the Baby Boom, that
forces the United States,

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the python in this analogy,
to try and deal with the
pig that has just swallowed.

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And the important factor
here is that the pig is
still passing through the
python. And we have now

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reached the point where Baby
Boomers are older and retiring.
And it's creating a new set of

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urgencies that the government
has to deal with and that
our society has to deal with.

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GEOFF BENNETT: What
characteristics do Baby
Boomers share? How is their

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generation different from
the one that preceded it
and the ones that followed?

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PHILIP BUMP: So one of
the fascinating things
about the Baby Boomers,

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it began at a low in
American immigration.

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There were -- about a century
ago, there were new restrictions
placed on immigration,

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a backlash to immigrants from
Eastern Europe and Southern
Europe in particular. And that

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was still in place when
the Baby Boom began. At
the time of the Baby Boom,

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one demographer told me,
the average immigrant was
somebody's grandparents.

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And right after the Boom
ended, there was - - the
immigration laws were loosened.

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So you started seeing more
immigrants from Central America
and Mexico and Asia. And so

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what happened when the Baby
Boom began is, it began at a
time when America was very,

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very heavily white in a
way that it no longer is.

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And so the Baby Boom has
-- obviously, it's a very
heterogeneous generation.
It has to be. There's

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tens of millions of people
in it. But it tends to be
much more heavily white
than the generation,

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particularly the one that
followed it. It tends to
be less heavily made up of

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immigrants. It tends to
have other characteristics
as well. It has -- it's
less likely -- Boomers

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are less likely to have gone
to college than millennials
or Gen Z, for example.

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They're more likely to
participate in institution,
marriage among them,

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the military, things along those
lines. And those really shape
both the culture and politics

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of the Baby Boomer in
a way that makes them
distinct, particularly
from younger generations.

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GEOFF BENNETT: Well,
understanding that
generational analyses are
in many ways unavoidably

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sort of crude and imprecise,
when we talk about the
Baby Boom, we're talking
about the Woodstock

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generation, in many ways,
who, in 2016, these were
the same folks who put
Donald Trump in office.

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Help us understand
how that happened.

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PHILIP BUMP: Yes. No,
it's a great question.

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And, fundamentally, it
comes down to the fact that
the Baby Boom really is

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two separate political groups.
There is a Republican group
and a Democratic group,

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which obviously isn't
unique to the Baby Boom.
But it's also the case of

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Boomers are less likely to
be registered independents
than younger generations.

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And so you had this tension
between left and right in
the Boom itself. But because

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the Republican Party
itself is so much older
than the Democratic
Party, Baby Boomers make

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up a larger percentage of
the Republican Party than
they do the Democratic Party.

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So, yes, the politics
certainly shifted to some
extent for individual
Boomers over that time. But

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it's also the case that,
fundamentally, the Baby
Boomers who voted for
Donald Trump were sharing a

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similar sort of concerns,
particularly around
race oftentimes, to some
extent, economics as well,

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that made them vote more
homogeneously than the Democrats
on the -- in the Baby Boom.

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And so we had this effect where,
yes, this was the generation
that fought against things like

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the Vietnam War draft, but
then, ultimately, over time,
had gotten to a point where they

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saw Donald Trump as the
preferable candidate in
2016 and helped propel
him to the White House.

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GEOFF BENNETT: Let's talk about
the impact on the economy,

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because reading your book,
I was struck by this line.

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You say: "The Baby Boom
has accumulated an enormous
amount of wealth during its

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three-quarters of a century
of existence." Baby Boomers,
many of them are supporting

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their millennial children.
In some cases, they're
supporting their grandchildren.

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What happens to the
distribution of wealth in this
country as Baby Boomers age?

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PHILIP BUMP: Yes, I mean, it's
-- an enormous amount of wealth
is being transferred already

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from Baby Boomers primarily
to younger family members,
but not exclusively,

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$2 million -- or $2 trillion,
according to some experts I
spoke with, in 2022 alone,

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upwards of $50 trillion
over the course of the
next several decades.

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That's an enormous amount
of wealth. But there are
a lot of questions about
what happens with that,

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right? What happens, for
example, as Boomers age
and they need more medical
attention? How much of

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that is siphoned away in terms
of the cost of medical care or
senior housing, senior living?

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How much -- what happens with
the housing market as seniors
age, right? A lot of senior

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citizens in particular view
their houses as a storehouse of
value for their retirement. How

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does that affect house
prices? What does that
mean for millennials
looking to buy houses?

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There are all these ways
in which this massive
amount of wealth that is
held by the Baby Boomers,

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it's not really clear how
much of that will end up
trickling down, particularly
to their families.

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But it's also important to
note, because the Baby Boomer
generation is so large,

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it's not the case that
Baby Boomers themselves
are particularly wealthy

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on an individual basis.
It's just that they have a
lot of wealth because there

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are a lot of them, even
if most of them aren't
particularly wealthy themselves.

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GEOFF BENNETT: And, Phil, as
we wrap up our conversation,

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I want to ask you about
one of the unanswered
questions in your book.

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You write this: "A generation
used to accruing and
defending its power through

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sheer scale is watching that
power crumble. We have seen
generational tensions before,

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as when the Boom emerged,
but we're now living through
something exceptional,

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a decline not of the
Spartan civilization,

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but of the Roman one.We
are living through an
historic disruption of
the American empire."

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So, what's this all mean for
the future of our politics, for
the future of our democracy?

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PHILIP BUMP: Yes.
No, absolutely.

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And, unfortunately, I'm not so
brash as to be able to have a
hard answer on that. But, yes,

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I mean, the Boom really shaped
what America looks like today,

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both in terms of just
the Boomers themselves
making decisions,

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but also in the way that
America had to respond to the
emergence of the Baby Boomers.

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And we're seeing that change.
We're seeing the Boom now
having to deal with this younger

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generation, millennials and
Gen Z, who are contesting
for power, contesting for it:

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I don't want to spend on
senior housing. I want
to spend on schools and
things along those lines.

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And that is contributing
some of the political
reaction that we're seeing,

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some of the backlash against
-- some of the increased
tension that we see

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in our politics. Does this mean
that young people, for example,
if they are more diverse,

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which they are, does that
mean they're going to
vote Democratic forever?

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No, probably not. There
are a lot of factors to
take into consideration
here. But this moment

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of tension is particularly
acute because the Baby Boom has
for so long been so powerful,

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and now for the first time
is having to compete for
that power in a real way.

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GEOFF BENNETT: Philip Bump,
his book is "The Aftermath:

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The Last Days of the
Baby Boom and the Future
of Power in America."

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Thanks for your time.

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PHILIP BUMP: Thank you, sir.