What the American Dream Looks Like for Boomers

Generally speaking, during most of our history America has been viewed as the land of opportunity. Likewise, our classic American Dream has been the promise that with hard work, anyone can improve their livelihood and lives (outside of targeted discrimination). So why does our classic American Dream feel like it’s fading away? It depends on who you ask.

Taking cues from anthropologists and advertising agencies that study context and behaviors to foresee trends, this series compares the classic American Dream to the American Dream as it’s trending and experienced by the generational cohorts we typically designate as Boomers (1946-64), Gen X (1965-79), Gen Y/Millennials (1980-94), Gen Z (1995-2012), and Gen Alpha (2013-25). As you compare your lived experience against our American Dream construct and trend for your cohort, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Image Credit: LA Times

The Classic American Dream

The classic American Dream is a vision that combines hope, opportunity, freedom, and individual responsibility. While its meaning and context will almost certainly vary from person to person, several core themes have endured:

Opportunity for All

At its heart, the classic American Dream is the belief that anyone—regardless of birth, background, or circumstance—can improve their life through their effort, talent, and determination (apart from targeted discrimination). It also assumes a society where pathways to success are open and merit matters.

Upward Mobility

Traditionally, this American Dream centers on the promise of economic and social mobility. Whether for the individual or family unit, this usually includes stable employment, homeownership, financial security, access to skill building/education, and the ability to provide a better life for one’s children. In this view, everyone expected the kids to enjoy better economic and social standing than their parents.

Freedom and Self-Determination

The classic American Dream includes the liberty to define one’s own path—to choose a career, express beliefs, start a business, or reinvent oneself. In this way, it’s both material and existential; not merely having more, but being free to become more.

Equality of Chance, Not Equality of Outcomes

This American Dream is tied to a vision of fairness. Here, the ideal is that one’s destiny should not be predetermined by class, race, or birthright. The emphasis is on a level playing field and equal opportunity, even if outcomes differ. (We can all acknowledge the disconnect between the ideal and the reality. Still, the Dream strived for the ideal.)

Ideally and no matter one's station in life (poor, middle class, or rich), financial stability is typically an element of how every person's version of the American Dream plays out. To the extent that financial stability is disconnected from one's version of the American Dream, the more stress exists in that person's life. In other words, the more the financial instability, the greater the stress—followed by anger.

In essence, the classic American Dream is the promise that with hard work and fair chances, people can shape their own futures and pursue lives of dignity, prosperity, and purpose. It has long been a national aspiration as well as a deeply personal one, and in this way has also been a unifying American value. But is it still?

In the early 20th century, the American Dream focused on individual freedom and escaping old-world hierarchies. By mid-century, it usually meant a suburban home, car, steady job, and the chance for the kids to go to college instead of war. So if the American Dream does evolve, what does it look like in the 21st century?

How’s the Dream Working for Boomers?

We’ll start by looking at how the American Dream is working for Boomers, although that depends on which Boomers we’re talking about. Born between 1946 and 1964, Boomers lived through an era when the classic American Dream was comparatively more attainable, but the outcomes diverged dramatically within that generation.

Image Credit: Kasasa

Successful Boomers

For many Boomers, the classic American Dream worked exceptionally well. A large portion of earlier Boomers reached adulthood when wages were higher relative to the cost of living, college was affordable, housing was inexpensive and accessible, and stable, long-term jobs with pensions were common.

As a result, homeownership rates soared; wealth accumulation, especially through real estate and stocks, became substantial; and many Boomers retired or are retiring with more security than any generation before them. For these “successful” Boomers, the classic American Dream was not only achievable but predictable and on schedule.

The Rest of the Boomers

The “successful Boomer” experience hides significant gaps for large subsets of Boomers who couldn’t or weren’t able to ride this wave. They include:

• Younger Boomers (Generation Jones 1954-65), where older Boomers hogged opportunities and resources (think younger siblings fighting older ones over toys).

• Single women, people of color, and those from poorer families who often faced barriers to entry and similar obstacles.

• Those who couldn’t accumulate wealth because of lower incomes or inconsistent employment.

• Those squeezed by skyrocketing rents because they don’t own their home.

• Those who can’t afford to retire; or if retired, live just on social security.

For these individuals, the classic American Dream feels like it was beyond their grasp, or it slipped from their hold.

The Boomers' Evolving American Dream

Boomers as a group hold a huge share of individual national wealth, but that wealth is highly concentrated in the top 10–20% of wealthiest Boomers. This situation creates the illusion that “Boomers did great.” In reality, many are comfortable or affluent while more are struggling, and there is far less middle ground than easy stereotypes suggest. Even for the wealthier Boomers, social and economic pressures are stressing their Dream. Those pressures include increased longevity that creates the fear of outliving one’s money; caregiving obligations for elderly parents, adult children, and even grandchildren; rising medical costs; and ever-shakier retirement investments.

At any time during a Boomer’s life, the classic American Dream may have felt like it worked–until it suddenly dropped out from under them, often for reasons beyond his or her control. Though they have experienced personal disappointments like everyone else, enlightened Boomers increasingly express gratitude for the opportunities teed up for them by their parents (the Greatest Generation) and awareness that the American Dream they enjoyed is increasingly harder for the following generations to access.

So What’s a Boomer to do?

As a Boomer, you probably harbor a mix of pride and worry. If you’re reading this, you’re likely pleased with your progress in elevating your station in life, even if you secretly wish it were more. On the other hand, you’re likely concerned for your children or grandchildren as you recognize that they may not be able to make nearly the same amount of progress.

What can you do to help sustain the American Dream? Here are our top three suggestions for Boomers:

• For you fortunate Boomers whose financial advisors–backed by quarterly Monte Carlo simulations–have shown you time and again that you’re not going to outlive your money and that it’s time to go out and enjoy spending it, have permission to enjoy spending most of it on others. In addition to your family, who will gratefully benefit from your generosity, find worthy persons, businesses, and causes to support. As a lawyer who practices succession and estate planning and routinely sits with the dying, I am a reliable witness that you can’t take even a penny with you.

• Join us here at Better Capitalism to help change the national business ethic from “maximize profit” to “optimize profit” (comprising the ethics of ‘enough’ and ‘mutuality’). The relatively new ethic of maximize profit (only since 1970) is a substantial contributor to the destruction of the classic American Dream.

• Volunteer your time and help some rising Gen Z (1997-2012) launch their career or business, or give some Gen Alpha (2013-2024) a helping hand by tutoring them on the skills they’ll need to face their challenges. Still got more money than time? Then make investments designed to help them–not you–tangibly benefit. Your benefit will be intangible and more valuable.

The next post in this series explores the American Dream as experienced by Gen X. You can read that post here. Meanwhile, review the suggestions immediately above, consider again what you can do to help restore the American Dream, and get started!

Fix Capitalism. Fix the American Dream.

Our vision is to benefit society by transforming capitalism's current core ethic of 'maximize shareholder value' to the better core ethic of 'optimize mutual value.' We achieve our vision by impacting learning, opinion, beliefs, and policy. Institute for Better Capitalism, Inc.

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