Baby Boomers

To the travel industry, which likes to place tag names on its market segments, today's mature travelers are made up of mostly "Depression Babies" (born between 1924 and 1934) and both "World War I Babies" (pre-1924) and "World War II Babies" (1935-1945). These mature travelers make for a stable and profitable travel target. Although they make up only 36% of U.S. households, they control 56% of total household wealth.

The letter from Jeffrey D. Parker of Lake Forest (March 25) screams out for a response. This self-appointed spokesman for "the baby boomers (who) have paid their dues" would have us all believe that "anti-growth initiatives" are some kind of oppressive conspiracy engineered by "the older generation to keep us from moving up into better housing." He claims that "We (the baby boomers) have the votes to stop the anti-growth movement" and foil the nefarious conspiracy "to keep my generation from moving into the most desirable areas."

The government announced last week that new home construction fell in December, and some people were rattled enough to call it a warning signal of recession. But predicting the economy on one month's housing starts, particularly those of a winter and holiday month like December, is stretching things. The housing report was not a warning of recession, but it may have been the first hard evidence of the stock market's crash affecting buyer confidence.

Because I sit here on the cutting edge, I often get sore as I look into the future. "What do you see out there, Alice?" people ask me, as if I had the slightest idea. But since we all want to know what lies around the bend, I'm willing to make something up. If it doesn't come true, I'm still the same jerk I was yesterday. If it does, people will say I'm a prophet, a seer, the best darned pulse-taker in the business. There will be a cult of Alice. Investors will buy my newsletter.

The great rush of students will begin as a trickle, the merest rivulet. Then, if the dire predictions prove true, that trickle will surge inexorably into a torrent. Cries of alarm are echoing through academia, for the beginning of that trickle is only two years away, sitting in 10th-grade classrooms across the country. They call it Tidal Wave II, the children of the baby boomers, the new generation of high school graduates who threaten to swamp colleges with a staggering rise in new applicants.

CBS, the television network that traditionally has attracted an older viewing audience, wants to convince advertisers that older can be better when it comes to pitching upscale products. The network plans to report television ratings information associated with adults between the ages of 35 and 54. CBS executives note that marketers create and package products with baby boomers in mind--but that advertisers aren't paying enough attention to boomers when it comes to media-buying practices.

Almost 4 in 10 baby boomers believe they will be better off financially in the next year, according to a survey by Mediamark Research Inc. Here are other results from the survey of Americans born from 1946 to 1964: 55.0%: Voted in an election in the last year 42.4%: Exercise at least twice a week 41.0%: Played the lottery in the last year 40.7%: Say "preserving the environment" is an important guiding principle in their lives 39.

Many baby boomers will face a nasty financial surprise when they retire because they're saving too little and not investing wisely, financial experts said Monday. "I think there's a retirement crisis in America," said Carter Beese, a commissioner with the Securities and Exchange Commission, at a conference on financial markets and the economy hosted by Boston College. Social Security will be worth "little more than food stamps when the baby boomers retire," he warned.

Homeownership gains during the 1990s were the strongest since the 1950s, according to separate studies conducted by USC and the nonprofit Fannie Mae Foundation. The USC study revealed that aging baby boomers were responsible for most of the increase in the homeownership rate. As older baby boomers moved from the 35-44 age group to the 45-54 group, they moved from a group with a 66.2% homeownership rate to one with a 75.3% rate.

Leave it to baby boomers to drive lifestyle trends. Having left behind free love in the 1960s and plastic surgery in the 1990s, aging, nesting boomers are now fueling interest, and sales, in second homes. Having a vacation retreat is the main motivation for adding a second home, followed by planning for retirement and diversifying investments, according to a new survey of second-home owners conducted by the National Assn. of Realtors and EscapeHomes.