text:
Gulf Coast of the United States

The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and these are known as the Gulf States.

The economy of the Gulf Coast area is dominated by industries related to energy, petrochemicals, fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The large cities of the region are (from west to east) Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Houston, Galveston, Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City, St. Petersburg, and Tampa. All are the centers or major cities of their respective metropolitan areas and many of which contain large ports.

Geography
The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, and lagoons. The coast is intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland. Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain, which reaches from Southern Texas to the western Florida Panhandle, while the western portions of the Gulf Coast are made up of many barrier islands and peninsulas, including the 130 mi Padre Island along the Texas coast. These landforms protect numerous bays and inlets providing as a barrier to oncoming waves. The central part of the Gulf Coast, from eastern Texas through Louisiana, consists primarily of marshland. The eastern part of the Gulf Coast, predominantly Florida, is dotted with many bays and inlets.

Climate
The Gulf Coast climate is humid subtropical, although Southwest Florida features a tropical climate. Much of the year is warm to hot along the Gulf Coast, while the three winter months bring periods of cool (or rarely, cold) weather mixed with mild temperatures. The area is highly vulnerable to hurricanes as well as floods and severe thunderstorms. Much of the Gulf Coast has a summer precipitation maximum, with July or August commonly the wettest month due to the combination of frequent summer thunderstorms produced by relentless heat and humidity, and tropical weather systems, including tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes, while winter and early spring rainfall also can be heavy.

This pattern is evident in southern cites as Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. However, the central and southern Florida peninsula and South Texas has a pronounced winter dry season, as at Tampa and Fort Myers. On the central and southern Texas coast, winter, early spring and mid-summer are markedly drier, and September is the wettest month on average at Corpus Christi and Brownsville, Texas. Tornadoes are infrequent at the coast but do occur; however, they occur more frequently in inland portions of Gulf Coast states. Over most of the Gulf Coast from Houston, Texas, eastward, extreme rainfall events are a significant threat, commonly from tropical weather systems, which can bring 4 to 10 or more inches of rain in a single day. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the central Texas coast, then migrated to and stalled over the greater Houston area for several days, producing extreme, unprecedented rainfall totals of over 40 inches (1,000 mm) in many areas, unleashing widespread flooding. Climate scientists predict more hurricanes for Florida and the Texas coastline in particular. Earthquakes are extremely rare to the area, but a 6.0 earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico on September 10, 2006, could be felt from the cities of New Orleans to Tampa.

Rising sea levels
Due to the release of greenhouse gas emissions, glaciers and ice sheets are melting and expanding the oceans. The United States coastlines are projected to rise 1 foot in three decades or between 10 and 12 inches on average by 2050. The Gulf Coast will likely see the biggest change, with sea levels expected to rise between 14 and 18 inches. The Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Report predicted more frequent, major and destructive high tide flooding events along with taller storm surges by 2050 after scientists determined high tide flooding has been "increasingly common" over the past few years due to the rising sea levels. The impacts are expected to be dramatic. Low-lying coastal areas are expected to experience multiple factors, including increased levels of flooding, accelerated erosion, loss of wetlands and low-lying terrestrial ecosystems, and seawater intrusion into freshwater sources. Rising sea level and erosion will also imperil critical habitats for many commercially important fisheries that depend on inshore waters for either permanent residence or nursery area. In 2021 alone rising sea levels cost the United States approximately $2.6 billion in relief efforts and caused at least seven deaths. By 2051, the cost of flood damage is expected to increase by 61%, or $32 billion.

Economic activities
The Gulf Coast is a major center of economic activity. The marshlands along the Louisiana and Texas coasts provide breeding grounds and nurseries for ocean life that drive the fishing and shrimping industries. The Port of South Louisiana (Metropolitan New Orleans in Laplace) and the Port of Houston are two of the ten busiest ports in the world by cargo volume. As of 2004, seven of the top ten busiest ports in the U.S. are on the Gulf Coast.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits along the coast and offshore, combined with easy access to shipping, have made the Gulf Coast the heart of the U.S. petrochemical industry. The coast contains nearly 4,000 oil platforms.

Besides the above, the region features other important industries including aerospace and biomedical research, as well as older industries such as agriculture and — especially since the development of the Gulf Coast beginning in the 1920s and the increase in wealth throughout the United States — tourism.

History
Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita have destroyed a number of museums and archives in the Gulf Coast. In 2008 floods in Iowa destroyed the local Flood Museum which held materials from the Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993.

Before European settlers arrived in the region, the Gulf Coast was home to several pre-Columbian kingdoms which had extensive trade networks with empires such as the Aztecs and the Mississippi Mound Builders. Shark and alligator teeth and shells from the Gulf have been found as far north as Ohio, in the mounds of the Hopewell culture.

The first Europeans to settle the Gulf Coast were primarily the French and the Spanish. The Louisiana Purchase (1803), Adams–Onís Treaty (1819) and the Texas Revolution (1835-1836) made the Gulf Coast a part of the United States during the first half of the 19th century. As the U.S. population continued to expand its frontiers westward, the Gulf Coast was a natural magnet in the South providing access to shipping lanes and both national and international commerce. The development of sugar and cotton production (enabled by slavery) allowed the South to prosper. By the mid 19th century the city of New Orleans, being situated as a key to commerce on the Mississippi River and in the Gulf, had become the largest U.S. city not on the Atlantic seaboard and the fourth largest in the U.S. overall.

Two major events were turning points in the earlier history of the Gulf Coast region. The first was the American Civil War, which caused severe damage to some economic sectors in the South, including the Gulf Coast. The second event was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. At the end of the 19th century Galveston was, with New Orleans, one of the most developed cities in the region. The city had the third busiest port in the U.S. and its financial district was known as the "Wall Street of the South".

Since then the Gulf Coast has been hit with numerous other hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane. It was the most damaging storm in the history of the United States, causing upwards of $80 billion in damages, and leaving over 1,800 dead. Again in 2008 the Gulf Coast was struck by a catastrophic hurricane. Due to its immense size, Hurricane Ike caused devastation from the Louisiana coastline all the way to the Kenedy County, Texas, region near Corpus Christi. In addition, Ike caused flooding and significant damage along the Mississippi coastline and the Florida Panhandle Ike killed 112 people and left upwards of 300 people missing, never to be found. Hurricane Ike was the third most damaging storm in the history of the United States, causing more than $25 billion in damage along the coast, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless, and sparking the largest search-and-rescue operation in U.S. history.

Other than the hurricanes, the Gulf Coast has redeveloped dramatically over the course of the 20th century. The gulf coast is highly populated. The petrochemical industry, launched with the major discoveries of oil in Texas and spurred on by further discoveries in the Gulf waters, has been a vehicle for development in the central and western Gulf which has spawned development on a variety of fronts in these regions. Texas in particular has benefited tremendously from this industry over the course of the 20th century and economic diversification has made the state a magnet for population and home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other U.S. state. Florida has grown as well, driven to a great extent by its long established tourism industry but also by its position as a gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America. As of 2024, Texas and Florida are the second and third most populous states in the nation, respectively. Other areas of the Gulf Coast have benefited less, though economic development fueled by tourism has greatly increased property values along the coast, and is now a severe danger to the valuable but fragile ecosystems of the Gulf Coast.

Metropolitan areas
The following table lists the 11 largest core-based statistical areas along the Gulf Coast.

International service

International destinations

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Gulf Coast of the United States


text:
Galaxy formation and evolution

The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby galaxies. Galaxy formation is hypothesized to occur from structure formation theories, as a result of tiny quantum fluctuations in the aftermath of the Big Bang. The simplest model in general agreement with observed phenomena is the Lambda-CDM model—that is, clustering and merging allows galaxies to accumulate mass, determining both their shape and structure. Hydrodynamics simulation, which simulates both baryons and dark matter, is widely used to study galaxy formation and evolution.

Commonly observed properties of galaxies
Because of the inability to conduct experiments in outer space, the only way to “test” theories and models of galaxy evolution is to compare them with observations. Explanations for how galaxies formed and evolved must be able to predict the observed properties and types of galaxies.

Edwin Hubble created an early galaxy classification scheme, now known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram. It partitioned galaxies into ellipticals, normal spirals, barred spirals (such as the Milky Way), and irregulars. These galaxy types exhibit the following properties which can be explained by current galaxy evolution theories:

Astronomers now believe that disk galaxies likely formed first, then evolved into elliptical galaxies through galaxy mergers.
 * Many of the properties of galaxies (including the galaxy color–magnitude diagram) indicate that there are fundamentally two types of galaxies. These groups divide into blue star-forming galaxies that are more like spiral types, and red non-star forming galaxies that are more like elliptical galaxies.
 * Spiral galaxies are quite thin, dense, and rotate relatively fast, while the stars in elliptical galaxies have randomly oriented orbits.
 * The majority of giant galaxies contain a supermassive black hole in their centers, ranging in mass from millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. The black hole mass is tied to the host galaxy bulge or spheroid mass.
 * Metallicity has a positive correlation with the absolute magnitude (luminosity) of a galaxy.

Current models also predict that the majority of mass in galaxies is made up of dark matter, a substance which is not directly observable, and might not interact through any means except gravity. This observation arises because galaxies could not have formed as they have, or rotate as they are seen to, unless they contain far more mass than can be directly observed.

Formation of disk galaxies
The earliest stage in the evolution of galaxies is their formation. When a galaxy forms, it has a disk shape and is called a spiral galaxy due to spiral-like "arm" structures located on the disk. There are different theories on how these disk-like distributions of stars develop from a cloud of matter: however, at present, none of them exactly predicts the results of observation.

Top-down theories
Olin Eggen, Donald Lynden-Bell, and Allan Sandage in 1962, proposed a theory that disk galaxies form through a monolithic collapse of a large gas cloud. The distribution of matter in the early universe was in clumps that consisted mostly of dark matter. These clumps interacted gravitationally, putting tidal torques on each other that acted to give them some angular momentum. As the baryonic matter cooled, it dissipated some energy and contracted toward the center. With angular momentum conserved, the matter near the center speeds up its rotation. Then, like a spinning ball of pizza dough, the matter forms into a tight disk. Once the disk cools, the gas is not gravitationally stable, so it cannot remain a singular homogeneous cloud. It breaks, and these smaller clouds of gas form stars. Since the dark matter does not dissipate as it only interacts gravitationally, it remains distributed outside the disk in what is known as the dark halo. Observations show that there are stars located outside the disk, which does not quite fit the "pizza dough" model. It was first proposed by Leonard Searle and Robert Zinn that galaxies form by the coalescence of smaller progenitors. Known as a top-down formation scenario, this theory is quite simple yet no longer widely accepted.

Bottom-up theory
More recent theories include the clustering of dark matter halos in the bottom-up process. Instead of large gas clouds collapsing to form a galaxy in which the gas breaks up into smaller clouds, it is proposed that matter started out in these “smaller” clumps (mass on the order of globular clusters), and then many of these clumps merged to form galaxies, which then were drawn by gravitation to form galaxy clusters. This still results in disk-like distributions of baryonic matter with dark matter forming the halo for all the same reasons as in the top-down theory. Models using this sort of process predict more small galaxies than large ones, which matches observations.

Astronomers do not currently know what process stops the contraction. In fact, theories of disk galaxy formation are not successful at producing the rotation speed and size of disk galaxies. It has been suggested that the radiation from bright newly formed stars, or from an active galactic nucleus can slow the contraction of a forming disk. It has also been suggested that the dark matter halo can pull the galaxy, thus stopping disk contraction.

The Lambda-CDM model is a cosmological model that explains the formation of the universe after the Big Bang. It is a relatively simple model that predicts many properties observed in the universe, including the relative frequency of different galaxy types; however, it underestimates the number of thin disk galaxies in the universe. The reason is that these galaxy formation models predict a large number of mergers. If disk galaxies merge with another galaxy of comparable mass (at least 15 percent of its mass) the merger will likely destroy, or at a minimum greatly disrupt the disk, and the resulting galaxy is not expected to be a disk galaxy (see next section). While this remains an unsolved problem for astronomers, it does not necessarily mean that the Lambda-CDM model is completely wrong, but rather that it requires further refinement to accurately reproduce the population of galaxies in the universe.

Galaxy mergers and the formation of elliptical galaxies

Elliptical galaxies (most notably supergiant ellipticals, such as ESO 306-17) are among some of the largest known thus far. Their stars are on orbits that are randomly oriented within the galaxy (i.e. they are not rotating like disk galaxies). A distinguishing feature of elliptical galaxies is that the velocity of the stars does not necessarily contribute to flattening of the galaxy, such as in spiral galaxies. Elliptical galaxies have central supermassive black holes, and the masses of these black holes correlate with the galaxy's mass.

Elliptical galaxies have two main stages of evolution. The first is due to the supermassive black hole growing by accreting cooling gas. The second stage is marked by the black hole stabilizing by suppressing gas cooling, thus leaving the elliptical galaxy in a stable state. The mass of the black hole is also correlated to a property called sigma which is the dispersion of the velocities of stars in their orbits. This relationship, known as the M-sigma relation, was discovered in 2000. Elliptical galaxies mostly lack disks, although some bulges of disk galaxies resemble elliptical galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are more likely found in crowded regions of the universe (such as galaxy clusters).

Astronomers now see elliptical galaxies as some of the most evolved systems in the universe. It is widely accepted that the main driving force for the evolution of elliptical galaxies is mergers of smaller galaxies. Many galaxies in the universe are gravitationally bound to other galaxies, which means that they will never escape their mutual pull. If those colliding galaxies are of similar size, the resultant galaxy will appear similar to neither of the progenitors, but will instead be elliptical. There are many types of galaxy mergers, which do not necessarily result in elliptical galaxies, but result in a structural change. For example, a minor merger event is thought to be occurring between the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds.

Mergers between such large galaxies are regarded as violent, and the frictional interaction of the gas between the two galaxies can cause gravitational shock waves, which are capable of forming new stars in the new elliptical galaxy. By sequencing several images of different galactic collisions, one can observe the timeline of two spiral galaxies merging into a single elliptical galaxy.

In the Local Group, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are gravitationally bound, and currently approaching each other at high speed. Simulations show that the Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course, and are expected to collide in less than five billion years. During this collision, it is expected that the Sun and the rest of the Solar System will be ejected from its current path around the Milky Way. The remnant could be a giant elliptical galaxy.

Galaxy quenching
One observation that must be explained by a successful theory of galaxy evolution is the existence of two different populations of galaxies on the galaxy color-magnitude diagram. Most galaxies tend to fall into two separate locations on this diagram: a "red sequence" and a "blue cloud". Red sequence galaxies are generally non-star-forming elliptical galaxies with little gas and dust, while blue cloud galaxies tend to be dusty star-forming spiral galaxies.

As described in previous sections, galaxies tend to evolve from spiral to elliptical structure via mergers. However, the current rate of galaxy mergers does not explain how all galaxies move from the "blue cloud" to the "red sequence". It also does not explain how star formation ceases in galaxies. Theories of galaxy evolution must therefore be able to explain how star formation turns off in galaxies. This phenomenon is called galaxy "quenching".

Stars form out of cold gas (see also the Kennicutt–Schmidt law), so a galaxy is quenched when it has no more cold gas. However, it is thought that quenching occurs relatively quickly (within 1 billion years), which is much shorter than the time it would take for a galaxy to simply use up its reservoir of cold gas. Galaxy evolution models explain this by hypothesizing other physical mechanisms that remove or shut off the supply of cold gas in a galaxy. These mechanisms can be broadly classified into two categories: (1) preventive feedback mechanisms that stop cold gas from entering a galaxy or stop it from producing stars, and (2) ejective feedback mechanisms that remove gas so that it cannot form stars.

One theorized preventive mechanism called “strangulation” keeps cold gas from entering the galaxy. Strangulation is likely the main mechanism for quenching star formation in nearby low-mass galaxies. The exact physical explanation for strangulation is still unknown, but it may have to do with a galaxy's interactions with other galaxies. As a galaxy falls into a galaxy cluster, gravitational interactions with other galaxies can strangle it by preventing it from accreting more gas. For galaxies with massive dark matter halos, another preventive mechanism called “virial shock heating” may also prevent gas from becoming cool enough to form stars.

Ejective processes, which expel cold gas from galaxies, may explain how more massive galaxies are quenched. One ejective mechanism is caused by supermassive black holes found in the centers of galaxies. Simulations have shown that gas accreting onto supermassive black holes in galactic centers produces high-energy jets; the released energy can expel enough cold gas to quench star formation.

Our own Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda Galaxy currently appear to be undergoing the quenching transition from star-forming blue galaxies to passive red galaxies.

Hydrodynamics Simulation
Dark energy and dark matter account for most of the Universe's energy, so it is valid to ignore baryons when simulating large-scale structure formation (using methods such as N-body simulation). However, since the visible components of galaxies consist of baryons, it is crucial to include baryons in the simulation to study the detailed structures of galaxies. At first, the baryon component consists of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, which later transforms into stars during the formation of structures. From observations, models used in simulations can be tested and the understanding of different stages of galaxy formation can be improved.

Euler equations
In cosmological simulations, astrophysical gases are typically modeled as inviscid ideal gases that follow the Euler equations, which can be expressed mainly in three different ways: Lagrangian, Eulerian, or arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian methods. Different methods give specific forms of hydrodynamical equations. When using the Lagrangian approach to specify the field, it is assumed that the observer tracks a specific fluid parcel with its unique characteristics during its movement through space and time. In contrast, the Eulerian approach emphasizes particular locations in space that the fluid passes through as time progresses.

Baryonic Physics
To shape the population of galaxies, the hydrodynamical equations must be supplemented by a variety of astrophysical processes mainly governed by baryonic physics.

Gas cooling
Processes, such as collisional excitation, ionization, and inverse Compton scattering, can cause the internal energy of the gas to be dissipated. In the simulation, cooling processes are realized by coupling cooling functions to energy equations. Besides the primordial cooling, at high temperature,$$\ 10^5K< T < 10^7K\,$$, heavy elements (metals) cooling dominates. When $$\ T < 10^4K\,$$, the fine structure and molecular cooling also need to be considered to simulate the cold phase of the interstellar medium.

Interstellar medium
Complex multi-phase structure, including relativistic particles and magnetic field, makes simulation of interstellar medium difficult. In particular, modeling the cold phase of the interstellar medium poses technical difficulties due to the short timescales associated with the dense gas. In the early simulations, the dense gas phase is frequently not modeled directly but rather characterized by an effective polytropic equation of state. More recent simulations use a multimodal distribution to describe the gas density and temperature distributions, which directly model the multi-phase structure. However, more detailed physics processes needed to be considered in future simulations, since the structure of the interstellar medium directly affects star formation.

Star formation
As cold and dense gas accumulates, it undergoes gravitational collapse and eventually forms stars. To simulate this process, a portion of the gas is transformed into collisionless star particles, which represent coeval, single-metallicity stellar populations and are described by an initial underlying mass function. Observations suggest that star formation efficiency in molecular gas is almost universal, with around 1% of the gas being converted into stars per free fall time. In simulations, the gas is typically converted into star particles using a probabilistic sampling scheme based on the calculated star formation rate. Some simulations seek an alternative to the probabilistic sampling scheme and aim to better capture the clustered nature of star formation by treating star clusters as the fundamental unit of star formation. This approach permits the growth of star particles by accreting material from the surrounding medium. In addition to this, modern models of galaxy formation track the evolution of these stars and the mass they return to the gas component, leading to an enrichment of the gas with metals.

Stellar feedback
Stars have an influence on their surrounding gas by injecting energy and momentum. This creates a feedback loop that regulates the process of star formation. To effectively control star formation, stellar feedback must generate galactic-scale outflows that expel gas from galaxies. Various methods are utilized to couple energy and momentum, particularly through supernova explosions, to the surrounding gas. These methods differ in how the energy is deposited, either thermally or kinetically. However, excessive radiative gas cooling must be avoided in the former case. Cooling is expected in dense and cold gas, but it cannot be reliably modeled in cosmological simulations due to low resolution. This leads to artificial and excessive cooling of the gas, causing the supernova feedback energy to be lost via radiation and significantly reducing its effectiveness. In the latter case, kinetic energy cannot be radiated away until it thermalizes. However, using hydrodynamically-decoupled wind particles to inject momentum non-locally into the gas surrounding active star-forming regions may still be necessary to achieve large-scale galactic outflows. Recent models explicitly model stellar feedback. These models not only incorporate supernova feedback but also consider other feedback channels such as energy and momentum injection from stellar winds, photoionization, and radiation pressure resulting from radiation emitted by young, massive stars. During the Cosmic Dawn, galaxy formation occurred in short bursts of 5 to 30 Myr due to stellar feedbacks.

Supermassive black holes
Simulation of supermassive black holes is also considered, numerically seeding them in dark matter haloes, due to their observation in many galaxies and the impact of their mass on the mass density distribution. Their mass accretion rate is frequently modeled by the Bondi-Hoyle model.

Active galactic nuclei
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) have an impact on the observational phenomena of supermassive black holes, and further have a regulation of black hole growth and star formation. In simulations, AGN feedback is usually classified into two modes, namely quasar and radio mode. Quasar mode feedback is linked to the radiatively efficient mode of black hole growth and is frequently incorporated through energy or momentum injection. The regulation of star formation in massive galaxies is believed to be significantly influenced by radio mode feedback, which occurs due to the presence of highly-collimated jets of relativistic particles. These jets are typically linked to X-ray bubbles that possess enough energy to counterbalance cooling losses.

Magnetic fields
The ideal magnetohydrodynamics approach is commonly utilized in cosmological simulations since it provides a good approximation for cosmological magnetic fields. The effect of magnetic fields on the dynamics of gas is generally negligible on large cosmological scales. Nevertheless, magnetic fields are a critical component of the interstellar medium since they provide pressure support against gravity and affect the propagation of cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays
Cosmic rays play a significant role in the interstellar medium by contributing to its pressure, serving as a crucial heating channel, and potentially driving galactic gas outflows. The propagation of cosmic rays is highly affected by magnetic fields. So in the simulation, equations describing the cosmic ray energy and flux are coupled to magnetohydrodynamics equations.

Radiation Hydrodynamics
Radiation hydrodynamics simulations are computational methods used to study the interaction of radiation with matter. In astrophysical contexts, radiation hydrodynamics is used to study the epoch of reionization when the Universe had high redshift. There are several numerical methods used for radiation hydrodynamics simulations, including ray-tracing, Monte Carlo, and moment-based methods. Ray-tracing involves tracing the paths of individual photons through the simulation and computing their interactions with matter at each step. This method is computationally expensive but can produce very accurate results.

title: Galaxy formation and evolution


text:
Generation X

Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the demographic cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the late 1970s as its ending birth years, with the generation being generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980. By this definition and U.S. Census data, there are 65.2 million Gen Xers in the United States as of 2019. Most of Generation X are the children of the Silent Generation and early Baby Boomers; Xers are also often the parents of Millennials and Generation Z.

As children in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of shifting societal values, Gen Xers were sometimes called the "latchkey generation", which stems from their returning as children from school to an empty home and needing to use a key to let themselves in. This was a result of what is now called free-range parenting, plus increasing divorce rates, and increased maternal participation in the workforce prior to widespread availability of childcare options outside the home.

As adolescents and young adults in the 1980s and 1990s, Xers were dubbed the "MTV Generation" (a reference to the music video channel), sometimes being characterized as slackers, cynical, and disaffected. Some of the many cultural influences on Gen X youth included a proliferation of musical genres with strong social-tribal identity such as alternative rock, hip hop, punk, post-punk, rave, and heavy metal, in addition to later forms developed by Gen Xers themselves (e.g., grunge, grindcore and related genres). Film, both the birth of franchise mega-sequels and a proliferation of independent film (enabled in part by video) was also a notable cultural influence. Video games, both in amusement parlours and in devices in Western homes, were also a major part of juvenile entertainment for the first time. Politically, in many Eastern Bloc countries, Generation X experienced the last days of communism and the transition to capitalism as part of its youth. In much of the Western world, a similar time period was defined by a dominance of conservatism and free market economics.

In their midlife during the early 21st century, research describes Gen Xers as active, happy, and achieving a work–life balance. The cohort has also been more broadly credited as entrepreneurial, and productive in the workplace.

Terminology and etymology

The term Generation X has been used at various times to describe alienated youth. In the early 1950s, Hungarian photographer Robert Capa first used Generation X as the title for a photo-essay about young men and women growing up immediately following World War II. The term first appeared in print in a December 1952 issue of Holiday magazine announcing their upcoming publication of Capa's photo-essay. From 1976 to 1981, English musician Billy Idol used the moniker as the name for his punk rock band. Idol had attributed the name of his band to the book Generation X, a 1964 book on British popular youth culture written by journalists Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett —a copy of which had been owned by Idol's mother. These uses of the term appear to have no connection to Robert Capa's photo-essay.

The term acquired a modern application after the release of Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a 1991 novel written by Canadian author Douglas Coupland; however, the definition used there is "born in the late 1950s and 1960s", which is about ten years earlier than definitions that came later. In 1987, Coupland had written a piece in Vancouver Magazine titled "Generation X" which was "the seed of what went on to become the book". Coupland referenced Billy Idol's band Generation X in the 1987 article and again in 1989 in Vista magazine. In the book proposal for his novel, Coupland writes that Generation X is "taken from the name of Billy Idol’s long-defunct punk band of the late 1970s". However, in 1995 Coupland denied the term's connection to the band, stating that:

"The book's title came not from Billy Idol's band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled, by Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an 'X' category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence."

Author William Strauss noted that around the time Coupland's 1991 novel was published the symbol "X" was prominent in popular culture, as the film Malcolm X was released in 1992, and that the name "Generation X" ended up sticking. The "X" refers to an unknown variable or to a desire not to be defined. Strauss's coauthor Neil Howe noted the delay in naming this demographic cohort saying, "Over 30 years after their birthday, they didn't have a name. I think that's germane." Previously, the cohort had been referred to as Post-Boomers, Baby Busters (which refers to the drop in birth rates following the baby boom in the western world, particularly in the U.S.), New Lost Generation, latchkey kids, MTV Generation, and the 13th Generation (the 13th generation since American independence).

Date and age range definitions
Generation X is the demographic cohort following the post–World War II baby-boom, representing a generational change from the baby boomers. Many researchers and demographers use dates that correspond to the fertility-patterns in the population. For Generation X, in the U.S. (and broadly, in the Western world), the period begins at a time when fertility rates started to significantly decrease, following the baby boom peak of the late 1950s, until an upswing in the late 1970s and eventual recovery at the start of the 1980s.

In the U.S., the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think-tank, delineates a Generation X period of 1965–1980 which has, albeit gradually, come to gain acceptance in academic circles. Moreover, although fertility rates are preponderant in the definition of start and end dates, the center remarks: "Generations are analytical constructs, it takes time for popular and expert consensus to develop as to the precise boundaries that demarcate one generation from another." Pew takes into account other factors, notably the labor market as well as attitudinal and behavioral trends of a group. Writing for Pew's Trend magazine in 2018, psychologist Jean Twenge observed that the "birth year boundaries of Gen X are debated but settle somewhere around 1965–1980". According to this definition, the oldest Gen Xer is 0 years old and the youngest is, or is turning, 0 years old in.

The Brookings Institution, another U.S. think-tank, sets the Gen X period as between 1965 and 1981. The U.S. Federal Reserve Board uses 1965–1980 to define Gen X. The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) defines the years for Gen X as between 1964 and 1979. The US Department of Defense (DoD), conversely, use dates 1965 to 1977. In their 2002 book When Generations Collide, Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman use 1965 to 1980, while in 2012 authors Jain and Pant also used parameters of 1965 to 1980. U.S. news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post describe Generation X as people born between 1965 and 1980. Gallup, Bloomberg, Business Insider, and Forbes use 1965–1980. Time magazine states that Generation X is "roughly defined as anyone born between 1965 and 1980". George Masnick of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies puts this generation in the time-frame of 1965 to 1984, in order to satisfy the premise that boomers, Xers, and millennials "cover equal 20-year age spans".

In Australia, the McCrindle Research Center uses 1965–1979. In the UK, the Resolution Foundation think-tank defines Gen X as those born between 1966 and 1980. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a multinational professional services network headquartered in London, describes Generation X employees as those born from 1965 to 1980.

Other age range markers
On the basis of the time it takes for a generation to mature, U.S. authors William Strauss and Neil Howe define Generation X as those born between 1961 and 1981 in their 1991 book titled Generations, and differentiate the cohort into an early and late wave. Jeff Gordinier, in his 2008 book X Saves the World, include those born between 1961 and 1977 but possibly as late as 1980. George Masnick of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies puts this generation in the time-frame of 1965 to 1984, in order to satisfy the premise that boomers, Xers, and millennials "cover equal 20-year age spans". In 2004, journalist J. Markert also acknowledged the 20-year increments but goes one step further and subdivides the generation into two 10-year cohorts with early and later members of the generation. The first begins in 1966 and ends in 1975 and the second begins in 1976 and ends in 1985; this thinking is applied to each generation (Silent, boomers, Gen X, millennials, etc.).

Based on external events of historical importance, Schewe and Noble in 2002 argue that a cohort is formed against significant milestones and can be any length of time. Against this logic, Generation X begins in 1966 and ends in 1976, with those born between 1955 and 1965 being labelled as "trailing-edge boomers".

The 1994 book Baby Busters: The Disillusioned Generation by George Barna refers to those born 1965–1983 as the "baby busters" generation rather than as Generation X.

In Canada, professor David Foot describes Generation X as late boomers and includes those born between 1960 and 1966, whilst the "Bust Generation", those born between 1967 and 1979, is considered altogether a separate generation, in his 1996 book Boom Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift.

Generational cuspers
People born in the latter half of the Baby Boomers from the early 1960s to the early years of Generation X are sometimes called Generation Jones. People born in the Generation X / millennial cusp years of the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s are sometimes called Xennials. Other names include the Star Wars Generation, Generation Catalano, and the Oregon Trail Generation. These "microgenerations" share characteristics of both generations.

United States
There are differences in Gen X population numbers depending on the date-range selected. In the U.S., using Census population projections, the Pew Research Center found that the Gen X population born from 1965 to 1980 numbered 65.2 million in 2019. The cohort is likely to overtake Boomers in 2028. A 2010 Census report counted approximately 84 million people living in the US who are defined by birth years ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.

In a 2012 article for the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, George Masnick wrote that the "Census counted 82.1 million" Gen Xers in the U.S. Masnick concluded that immigration filled in any birth year deficits during low fertility years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jon Miller at the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the University of Michigan wrote that "Generation X refers to adults born between 1961 and 1981" and it "includes 84 million people". In their 1991 book Generations, authors Howe and Strauss indicated that the total number of Gen X individuals in the U.S. was 88.5 million.

Impact of family planning programs
The birth control pill, introduced in 1960, was one contributing factor of declining birth rates. Initially, the pill spread rapidly amongst married women as an approved treatment for menstrual disturbance. However, it was also found to prevent pregnancy and was prescribed as a contraceptive in 1964. "The pill", as it became commonly known, reached younger, unmarried college women in the late 1960s when state laws were amended and reduced the age of majority from 21 to ages 18–20. These policies are commonly referred to as the Early Legal Access (ELA) laws.

Another major factor was abortion, only available in a few states until its legalisation in a 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. This was replicated elsewhere, with reproductive rights legislation passed, notably in the UK (1967), France (1975), West Germany (1976), New Zealand (1977), Italy (1978), and the Netherlands (1980). From 1973 to 1980, the abortion rate per 1,000 US women aged 15–44 increased from 16% to 29% with more than 9.6 million terminations of pregnancy practiced. Between 1970 and 1980, on average, for every 10 American citizens born, 3 were aborted. However, increased immigration during the same period of time helped to partially offset declining birth-rates and contributed to making Generation X an ethnically and culturally diverse demographic cohort.

Parental lineage
Generally, Gen Xers are the children of the Silent Generation and older Baby Boomers.

Rising divorce rates and women workforce participation
Strauss and Howe, who wrote several books on generations, including one specifically on Generation X titled 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? (1993), reported that Gen Xers were children at a time when society was less focused on children and more focused on adults. Xers were children during a time of increasing divorce rates, with divorce rates doubling in the mid-1960s, before peaking in 1980. Strauss and Howe described a cultural shift where the long-held societal value of staying together for the sake of the children was replaced with a societal value of parental and individual self-actualization. Strauss wrote that society "moved from what Leslie Fiedler called a 1950s-era 'cult of the child' to what Landon Jones called a 1970s-era 'cult of the adult'". The Generation Map, a report from Australia's McCrindle Research Center writes of Gen X children: Boomer parents were the most divorced generation in Australian history". According to Christine Henseler in the 2012 book Generation X Goes Global: Mapping a Youth Culture in Motion, "We watched the decay and demise (of the family), and grew callous to the loss."

The Gen X childhood coincided with the sexual revolution of the 1960s to 1980s, which Susan Gregory Thomas described in her book In Spite of Everything as confusing and frightening for children in cases where a parent would bring new sexual partners into their home. Thomas also discussed how divorce was different during the Gen X childhood, with the child having a limited or severed relationship with one parent following divorce, often the father, due to differing societal and legal expectations. In the 1970s, only nine U.S. states allowed for joint custody of children, which has since been adopted by all 50 states following a push for joint custody during the mid-1980s. Kramer vs. Kramer, a 1979 American legal drama based on Avery Corman's best-selling novel, came to epitomize the struggle for child custody and the demise of the traditional nuclear family.

The rapid influx of Boomer women into the labor force that began in the 1970s was marked by the confidence of many in their ability to successfully pursue a career while meeting the needs of their children. This resulted in an increase in latchkey children, leading to the terminology of the "latchkey generation" for Generation X. These children lacked adult supervision in the hours between the end of the school day and when a parent returned home from work in the evening, and for longer periods of time during the summer. Latchkey children became common among all socioeconomic demographics, but this was particularly so among middle- and upper-class children. The higher the educational attainment of the parents, the higher the odds the children of this time would be latchkey children, due to increased maternal participation in the workforce at a time before childcare options outside the home were widely available. McCrindle Research Centre described the cohort as "the first to grow up without a large adult presence, with both parents working", stating this led to Gen Xers being more peer-oriented than previous generations.

Conservative and neoliberal turn
Some older Gen Xers started high school in the waning years of the Carter presidency, but much of the cohort became socially and politically conscious during the Reagan Era. President Ronald Reagan, voted in office principally by the Boomer generation, embraced laissez-faire economics with vigor. His policies included cuts in the growth of government spending, reduction in taxes for the higher echelon of society, legalization of stock buybacks, and deregulation of key industries. The early 1980s recession saw unemployment rise to 10.8% in 1982; requiring, more often than not, dual parental incomes. One in five American children grew up in poverty during this time. The federal debt almost tripled during Reagan's time in office, from $998 billion in 1981 to $2.857 trillion in 1989, placing greater burden of repayment on the incoming generation.

Government expenditure shifted from domestic programs to defense. Remaining funding initiatives, moreover, tended to be diverted away from programs for children and often directed toward the elderly population, with cuts to Medicaid and programs for children and young families, and protection and expansion of Medicare and Social Security for the elderly population. These programs for the elderly were not tied to economic need. Congressman David Durenberger criticized this political situation, stating that while programs for poor children and for young families were cut, the government provided "free health care to elderly millionaires".

The crack epidemic and AIDS
Gen Xers came of age or were children during the 1980s crack epidemic, which disproportionately impacted urban areas as well as the African-American community. The U.S. Drug turf battles increased violent crime. Crack addiction impacted communities and families. Between 1984 and 1989, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 doubled in the U.S., and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased almost as much. The crack epidemic had a destabilizing impact on families, with an increase in the number of children in foster care. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to enforce strict mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users. He also increased the federal budget for supply-reduction efforts.

Fear of the impending AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s loomed over the formative years of Generation X. The emergence of AIDS coincided with Gen X's adolescence, with the disease first clinically observed in the U.S. in 1981. By 1985, an estimated one-to-two million Americans were HIV-positive. This particularly hit the LGBT community. As the virus spread, at a time before effective treatments were available, a public panic ensued. Sex education programs in schools were adapted to address the AIDS epidemic, which taught Gen X students that sex could kill them.

The rise of home computing
Gen Xers were the first children to have access to personal computers in their homes and at schools. In the early 1980s, the growth in the use of personal computers exploded. Manufacturers such as Commodore, Atari, and Apple responded to the demand via 8-bit and 16-bit machines. This in turn stimulated the software industries with corresponding developments for backup storage, use of the floppy disk, zip drive, and CD-ROM.

At school, several computer projects were supported by the Department of Education under United States Secretary of Education Terrel Bell's "Technology Initiative". This was later mirrored in the UK's 1982 Computers for Schools programme and, in France, under the 1985 scheme Plan Informatique pour Tous (IPT).

The post–civil rights generation
In the U.S., Generation X was the first cohort to grow up post-integration after the racist Jim Crow laws. They were described in a marketing report by Specialty Retail as the kids who "lived the civil rights movement". They were among the first children to be bused to attain integration in the public school system. In the 1990s, Strauss reported Gen Xers were "by any measure the least racist of today's generations". In the U.S., Title IX, which passed in 1972, provided increased athletic opportunities to Gen X girls in the public school setting. Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley and broadcast as a 12-hour series, was viewed as a turning point in the country's ability to relate to the afro-American history.

Continued growth in college enrollments
In the U.S., compared to the Boomer generation, Generation X was more educated than their parents. The share of young adults enrolling in college steadily increased from 1983, before peaking in 1998. In 1965, as early Boomers entered college, total enrollment of new undergraduates was just over 5.7 million individuals across the public and private sectors. By 1983, the first year of Gen X college enrollments (as per Pew Research's definition), this figure had reached 12.2 million. This was an increase of 53%, effectively a doubling in student intake. As the 1990s progressed, Gen X college enrollments continued to climb, with increased loan borrowing as the cost of an education became substantially more expensive compared to their peers in the mid-1980s. By 1998, the generation's last year of college enrollment, those entering the higher education sector totaled 14.3 million. In addition, unlike Boomers and previous generations, women outpaced men in college completion rates.

Adjusting to a new societal environment
For early Gen Xer graduates entering the job market at the end of the 1980s, economic conditions were challenging and did not show signs of major improvements until the mid-1990s. In the U.S., restrictive monetary policy to curb rising inflation and the collapse of a large number of savings and loan associations (private banks that specialized in home mortgages) impacted the welfare of many American households. This precipitated a large government bailout, which placed further strain on the budget. Furthermore, three decades of growth came to an end. The social contract between employers and employees, which had endured during the 1960s and 1970s and was scheduled to last until retirement, was no longer applicable. By the late 1980s, there were large-scale layoffs of Boomers, corporate downsizing, and accelerated offshoring of production.

On the political front, in the U.S. the generation became ambivalent if not outright disaffected with politics. They had been reared in the shadow of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. They came to maturity under the Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidencies, with first-hand experience of the impact of neoliberal policies. Few had experienced a Democratic administration and even then, only, at an atmospheric level. For those on the left of the political spectrum, the disappointments with the previous Boomer student mobilizations of the 1960s and the collapse of those movements towards a consumerist "greed is good" and "yuppie" culture during the 1980s felt, to a greater extent, hypocrisy if not outright betrayal. Hence, the preoccupation on "authenticity" and not "selling-out". The Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the socialist utopia with the fall of the Berlin Wall, moreover, added to the disillusionment that any alternative to the capitalist model was possible.

Birth of the slacker
In 1990, Time magazine published an article titled "Living: Proceeding with Caution", which described those then in their 20s as aimless and unfocused. Media pundits and advertisers further struggled to define the cohort, typically portraying them as "unfocused twentysomethings". A MetLife report noted: "media would portray them as the Friends generation: rather self-involved and perhaps aimless...but fun".

Gen Xers were often portrayed as apathetic or as "slackers", lacking bearings, a stereotype which was initially tied to Richard Linklater's comedic and essentially plotless 1991 film Slacker. After the film was released, "journalists and critics thought they put a finger on what was different about these young adults in that 'they were reluctant to grow up' and 'disdainful of earnest action'". Ben Stiller's 1994 film Reality Bites also sought to capture the zeitgeist of the generation with a portrayal of the attitudes and lifestyle choices of the time.

Negative stereotypes of Gen X young adults continued, including that they were "bleak, cynical, and disaffected". In 1998, such stereotypes prompted sociological research at Stanford University to study the accuracy of the characterization of Gen X young adults as cynical and disaffected. Using the national General Social Survey, the researchers compared answers to identical survey questions asked of 18–29-year-olds in three different time periods. Additionally, they compared how older adults answered the same survey questions over time. The surveys showed 18–29-year-old Gen Xers did exhibit higher levels of cynicism and disaffection than previous cohorts of 18–29-year-olds surveyed. However, they also found that cynicism and disaffection had increased among all age groups surveyed over time, not just young adults, making this a period effect, not a cohort effect. In other words, adults of all ages were more cynical and disaffected in the 1990s, not just Generation X.

In a 2023 interview with television host Bill Maher on the podcast Club Random with Bill Maher, vocalist and guitarist Billy Corgan hinted at how the Smashing Pumpkins spoke to the disillusionment felt by many Gen Xers as they reached adulthood, noting:

"At least generationally, I think that's why I connected with so many people—because I was speaking the patois of: Gilligan's Island meets 'What the fuck happened in my life?'"

Rise of the Internet and the dot-com bubble
By the mid-late 1990s, under Bill Clinton's presidency, economic optimism had returned to the U.S., with unemployment reduced from 7.5% in 1992 to 4% in 2000. Younger members of Gen X, straddling across administrations, politically experienced a "liberal renewal". In 1997, Time magazine published an article titled "Generation X Reconsidered", which retracted the previously reported negative stereotypes and reported positive accomplishments. The article cited Gen Xers' tendency to found technology startup companies and small businesses, as well as their ambition, which research showed was higher among Gen X young adults than older generations. Yet, the slacker moniker stuck. As the decade progressed, Gen X gained a reputation for entrepreneurship. In 1999, The New York Times dubbed them "Generation 1099", describing them as the "once pitied but now envied group of self-employed workers whose income is reported to the Internal Revenue Service not on a W-2 form, but on Form 1099".

Consumer access to the Internet and its commercial development throughout the 1990s witnessed a frenzy of IT initiatives. Newly created companies, launched on stock exchanges globally, were formed with dubitable revenue generation or cash flow. When the dot-com bubble eventually burst in 2000, early Gen Xers who had embarked as entrepreneurs in the IT industry while riding the Internet wave, as well as newly qualified programmers at the tail-end of the generation (who had grown up with AOL and the first Web browsers), were both caught in the crash. This had major repercussions, with cross-generational consequences; five years after the bubble burst, new matriculation of IT Millennial undergraduates fell by 40% and by as much as 70% in some information systems programs.

However, following the crisis, sociologist Mike Males reported continued confidence and optimism among the cohort. He reported "surveys consistently find 80% to 90% of Gen Xers self-confident and optimistic". Males wrote "these young Americans should finally get the recognition they deserve", praising the cohort and stating that "the permissively raised, universally deplored Generation X is the true 'great generation', for it has braved a hostile social climate to reverse abysmal trends". He described them as the hardest-working group since the World War II generation. He reported Gen Xers' entrepreneurial tendencies helped create the high-tech industry that fueled the 1990s economic recovery. In 2002, Time magazine published an article titled Gen Xers Aren't Slackers After All, reporting that four out of five new businesses were the work of Gen Xers.

Response to 9/11
In the U.S., Gen Xers were described as the major heroes of the September 11 terrorist attacks by author William Strauss. The firefighters and police responding to the attacks were predominantly from Generation X. Additionally, the leaders of the passenger revolt on United Airlines Flight 93 were also, by majority, Gen Xers. Author Neil Howe reported survey data which showed that Gen Xers were cohabiting and getting married in increasing numbers following the terrorist attacks. Gen X survey respondents reported that they no longer wanted to live alone.

In October 2001, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote of Gen Xers: "Now they could be facing the most formative events of their lives and their generation." The Greensboro News & Record reported members of the cohort "felt a surge of patriotism since terrorists struck" by giving blood, working for charities, donating to charities, and by joining the military to fight the War on Terror. The Jury Expert, a publication of The American Society of Trial Consultants, reported: "Gen X members responded to the terrorist attacks with bursts of patriotism and national fervor that surprised even themselves."

Achieving a work-life balance
In 2011, survey analysis from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth found Gen Xers (defined as those who were then between the ages of 30 and 50) to be "balanced, active, and happy" in midlife and as achieving a work-life balance. The Longitudinal Study of Youth is an NIH-NIA funded study by the University of Michigan which has been studying Generation X since 1987. The study asked questions such as "Thinking about all aspects of your life, how happy are you? If zero means that you are very unhappy and 10 means that you are very happy, please rate your happiness." LSA reported that "mean level of happiness was 7.5 and the median (middle score) was 8. Only four percent of Generation X adults indicated a great deal of unhappiness (a score of three or lower). Twenty-nine percent of Generation X adults were very happy with a score of 9 or 10 on the scale."

In 2014, Pew Research provided further insight, describing the cohort as "savvy, skeptical and self-reliant; they're not into preening or pampering, and they just might not give much of a hoot what others think of them. Or whether others think of them at all." Furthermore, guides regarding managing multiple generations in the workforce describe Gen Xers as: independent, resilient, resourceful, self-managing, adaptable, cynical, pragmatic, skeptical of authority, and as seeking a work-life balance.

Entrepreneurship as an individual trait
Individualism is one of the defining traits of Generation X, and is reflected in their entrepreneurial spirit. In the 2008 book X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking, author Jeff Gordinier describes Generation X as a "dark horse demographic" which "doesn't seek the limelight". Gordiner cites examples of Gen Xers' contributions to society such as: Google, Wikipedia, Amazon.com, and YouTube, arguing that if Boomers had created them, "we'd never hear the end of it". In the book, Gordinier contrasts Gen Xers to Baby Boomers, saying Boomers tend to trumpet their accomplishments more than Gen Xers do, creating what he describes as "elaborate mythologies" around their achievements. Gordiner cites Steve Jobs as an example, while Gen Xers, he argues, are more likely to "just quietly do their thing".

In a 2007 article published in the Harvard Business Review, authors Strauss and Howe wrote of Generation X: "They are already the greatest entrepreneurial generation in U.S. history; their high-tech savvy and marketplace resilience have helped America prosper in the era of globalization." According to authors Michael Hais and Morley Winograd: "Small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit that Gen Xers embody have become one of the most popular institutions in America. There's been a recent shift in consumer behavior and Gen Xers will join the 'idealist generation' in encouraging the celebration of individual effort and business risk-taking. As a result, Xers will spark a renaissance of entrepreneurship in economic life, even as overall confidence in economic institutions declines. Customers, and their needs and wants (including Millennials) will become the North Star for an entire new generation of entrepreneurs."

A 2015 study by Sage Group reports Gen Xers "dominate the playing field" with respect to founding startups in the United States and Canada, with Xers launching the majority (55%) of all new businesses in 2015.

Income benefits of a college education
Unlike Millennials, Generation X was the last generation in the U.S. for whom higher education was broadly financially remunerative. In 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published research (using data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances) demonstrating that after controlling for race and age, cohort families with heads of household with post-secondary education and born before 1980 have seen wealth and income premiums, while, for those after 1980, the wealth premium has weakened to a point of statistical insignificance (in part because of the rising cost of college). The income premium, while remaining positive, has declined to historic lows, with more pronounced downward trajectories among heads of household with postgraduate degrees.

Parenting and volunteering
In terms of advocating for their children in the educational setting, author Neil Howe describes Gen X parents as distinct from Baby Boomer parents. Howe argues that Gen Xers are not helicopter parents, which Howe describes as a parenting style of Boomer parents of Millennials. Howe described Gen Xers instead as "stealth fighter parents", due to the tendency of Gen X parents to let minor issues go and to not hover over their children in the educational setting, but to intervene forcefully and swiftly in the event of more serious issues. In 2012, the Corporation for National and Community Service ranked Gen X volunteer rates in the U.S. at "29.4% per year", the highest compared with other generations. The rankings were based on a three-year moving average between 2009 and 2011.

Communication style
Generation X prefers the communication modes of face-to-face and phone, whereas the younger generations prefer e-mail and texting. Also, Generation X is less likely to ghost than Millennials and Generation Z. Social media usage is also different, with Generation X preferring LinkedIn and Facebook, while Millennials and Generation Z prefer Snapchat and TikTok.

Income differential with previous generations
A report titled Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? focused on the income of males 30–39 in 2004 (those born April 1964 – March 1974). The study was released on 25 May 2007 and emphasized that this generation's men made less (by 12%) than their fathers had at the same age in 1974, thus reversing a historical trend. It concluded that, per year increases in household income generated by fathers/sons slowed from an average of 0.9% to 0.3%, barely keeping pace with inflation. "Family incomes have risen though (over the period 1947 to 2005) because more women have gone to work",  "supporting the incomes of men, by adding a second earner to the family. And as with male income, the trend is downward."

Elsewhere
Although, globally, children and adolescents of Generation X will have been heavily influenced by U.S. cultural industries with shared global currents (e.g., rising divorce rates, the AIDS epidemic, advancements in ICT), there is not one U.S.-born raised concept but multiple perspectives and geographical outgrowths. Even within the period of analysis, inside national communities, commonalities will have differed on the basis of one's birth date. The generation, Christine Henseler also remarks, was shaped as much by real-world events, within national borders, determined by specific political, cultural, and historical incidents. She adds "In other words, it is in between both real, clearly bordered spaces and more fluid global currents that we can spot the spirit of Generation X."

In 2016, a global consumer insights project from Viacom International Media Networks and Viacom, based on over 12,000 respondents across 21 countries, reported on Gen X's unconventional approach to sex, friendship, and family, their desire for flexibility and fulfillment at work and the absence of midlife crisis for Gen Xers. The project also included a 20 min documentary titled Gen X Today.

Russia
In Russia, Generation Xers are referred to as "the last Soviet children", as the last children to come of age prior to the downfall of communism in their nation and prior to the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. Those that reached adulthood in the 1980s and grew up educated in the doctrines of Marxism and Leninism found themselves against a background of economic and social change, with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev to power and Perestroika. However, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disbanding of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, surveys demonstrated that Russian young people repudiated the key features of the Communist worldview that their party leaders, schoolteachers, and even parents had tried to instill in them. This generation, caught in the transition between Marxism–Leninism and an unknown future, and wooed by the new domestic political classes, remained largely apathetic.

France
In France, "Generation X" is not as widely known or used to define its members. Politically, this loosely denotes those born in the early 1960s to the early 1980s. Although fertility rates started to fall in 1965, number of births in France only followed suit in 1975. There is general agreement that, domestically, the event that is accepted in France as the separating point between the Baby Boomer generation and Generation X are the French strikes and violent riots of May 1968 with those of the generation too young to participate. Those at the start of the cohort are sometimes referred to as 'Génération Bof' because of their tendency to use the word 'bof', which, translated into English, means "whatever".

The generation is closely associated with socialist François Mitterrand who served as President of France during two consecutive terms between 1981 and 1995 as most transitioned from teenagers into adulthood during that period. Economically, Xers started when the new labour market was emerging and were the first to fully experience the advent of the post-industrial society. For those at the tail-end of the generation, educational and defence reforms, a new style baccalauréat général with three distinct streams in 1995 (the preceding programme, introduced in 1968) the 2002 licence-master-doctorat reform for first Millennial graduates (DEUG, Maîtrise, DESS and DEA degrees no longer awarded), and the cessation of military conscription in 1997 (for those born after January 1979) are considered as new transition points to the next.

Republic of Ireland
The term "Generation X" is used to describe Irish people born between 1965 and 1985; they grew up during The Troubles and the 1980s economic recession, coming of age during the Celtic Tiger period of prosperity in the 1990s onward. The appropriateness of the term to Ireland has been questioned, with Darach Ó Séaghdha noting that "Generation X is usually contrasted with the one before by growing up in smaller and different family units on account of their parents having greater access to contraception and divorce – again, things that were not widely available in Ireland. [Contraception was only available under prescription in 1978 and without prescription in 1985; divorce was illegal until 1996.] However, this generation was in prime position to benefit from the Celtic Tiger, the Peace Process and liberalisations introduced on foot of EU membership and was less likely to emigrate than those that came before and after. You could say that in many ways, these are Ireland’s real Boomers."

Culturally, Britpop, Celtic rock, the trad revival, Father Ted, the 1990 FIFA World Cup and rave culture were significant. The Divine Comedy song "Generation Sex" (1998) painted a picture of hedonism in the late 20th century, as well as its effect on the media. David McWilliams' 2005 book The Pope's Children: Ireland's New Elite profiled Irish people born in the 1970s (just prior to the papal visit to Ireland), which was a baby boom that saw Ireland's population increase for the first time since the 1840s Great Famine. The Pope's Children were in position to benefit from the Celtic Tiger and the newly liberal culture, where the Catholic Church had significantly less social power.

Political environment
The United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council described Generation X as "Thatcher's children" because the cohort grew up while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, "a time of social flux and transformation". Those born in the late 1960s and early 1970s grew up in a period of social unrest. While unemployment was low in the early 1970s, industrial and social unrest escalated. Strike action culminated in the "Winter of Discontent" in 1978–79, and the Troubles began to unfold in Northern Ireland. The turn to neoliberal policies introduced and maintained by consecutive conservative governments from 1979 to 1997 marked the end of the post-war consensus.

Education
The almost universal dismantling of the grammar school system in Great Britain during the 1960s and the 1970s meant that the vast majority of the cohort attended comprehensive schools. Compulsory education ended at the age of 16. As older members of the cohort reached the end of their mandatory schooling, levels of educational enrollment among older adolescents remained below much of the Western world. By the early 1980s, some 80% to 90% of school leavers in France and West Germany received vocational training, compared with 40% in the United Kingdom. By the mid-1980s, over 80% of pupils in the United States and West Germany and over 90% in Japan stayed in education until the age of eighteen, compared with 33% of British pupils. There was, however, broadly a rise in education levels among this age range as Generation X passed through it.

In 1990, 25% of young people in England stayed in some kind of full-time education after the age of 18, this was an increase from 15% a decade earlier. Later, the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 and the liberalisation of higher education in the UK saw greater numbers of those born towards the tail-end of the generation gaining university places.

Employment
The 1980s, when some of Generation X reached working age, was an era defined by high unemployment rates. This was particularly true of the youngest members of the working aged population. In 1984, 26% of 16 to 24 year olds were neither in full-time education or participating in the workforce. However, this figure did decrease as the economic situation improved reaching 17% by 1993.

In midlife
Generation X were far more likely to have children out of wedlock than their parents. The number of babies being born to unmarried parents in England and Wales rose from 11% in 1979, a quarter in 1998, 40% by 2002 and almost half in 2012. They were also significantly more likely to have children later in life than their predecessors. The average age of a mother giving birth rose from 27 in 1982 to 30 in 2012. That year saw 29,994 children born to mothers over the age 40, an increase of 360% from 2002.

A 2016 study of over 2,500 British office workers conducted by Workfront found that survey respondents of all ages selected those from Generation X as the hardest-working employees and members of the workforce (chosen by 60%). Gen X was also ranked highest among fellow workers for having the strongest work ethic (chosen by 59.5%), being the most helpful (55.4%), the most skilled (54.5%), and the best troubleshooters/problem-solvers (41.6%).

Political evolution
Ipsos MORI reports that at the 1987 and 1992 general elections, the first United Kingdom general elections where significant numbers of Generation X members could vote, a plurality of 18 to 24 year olds opted for the Labour Party by a small margin. The polling organisation's figures suggest that in 1987, 39% of that age group voted Labour, 37% for the Conservatives and 22% for the SDP–Liberal Alliance. Five years later, these numbers were fairly similar at 38% Labour, 35% Conservative and 19% Liberal Democrats, a party by then formed from the previously mentioned alliance. Both these elections saw a fairly significant lead for the Conservatives in the popular vote among the general population.

At the 1997 General election where Labour won a large majority of seats and a comfortable lead in the popular vote, research suggests that voters under the age of 35 were more likely to vote Labour if they turned out than the wider electorate but significantly less likely to vote than in 1992. Analysts suggested this may have been due to fewer differences in policies between the major parties and young people having less of a sense of affiliation with particular political parties than older generations. A similar trend continued at the 2001 and 2005 general elections as turnout dropped further among both the relatively young and the wider public.

Voter turnout across the electorate began to recover from a 2001 low until the 2017 general election. Generation X also became more likely to vote as they entered the midlife age demographics. Polling suggests a plurality of their age group backed the Conservatives in 2010 and 2015 but less overwhelming than much of the older generation. At the 2016 EU membership referendum and 2017 general election, Generation X was split with younger members appearing to back remain and Labour and older members tending towards Leave and Conservative in a British electorate more polarised by age than ever before. At the 2019 general election, voting trends continued to be heavily divided by age but a plurality of younger as well as older generation X members (then 39 to 55 year olds) voted Conservative.

Germany
In Germany, "Generation X" is not widely used or applied. Instead, reference is made to "Generation Golf" in the previous West German republic, based on a novel by Florian Illies. In the east, children of the "Mauerfall" or coming down of the wall. For former East Germans, there was adaptation, but also a sense of loss of accustomed values and structures. These effects turned into romantic narratives of their childhood. For those in the West, there was a period of discovery and exploration of what had been a forbidden land.

South Africa
In South Africa, Gen Xers spent their formative years of the 1980s during the "hyper-politicized environment of the final years of apartheid".

Music
Gen Xers were the first cohort to come of age with MTV. They were the first generation to experience the emergence of music videos as teenagers and are sometimes called the MTV Generation. Gen Xers were responsible for the alternative rock movement of the 1990s and 2000s, including the grunge subgenre. Hip hop has also been described as defining music of the generation, particularly artists such as Tupac Shakur, N.W.A., and The Notorious B.I.G.

Punk rock

From 1974 to 1976, a new generation of rock bands arose, such as the Ramones, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, The Dictators in New York City, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, and Buzzcocks in the United Kingdom, and the Saints in Brisbane. By late 1976, these acts were generally recognized as forming the vanguard of "punk rock", and as 1977 approached, punk rock became a major and highly controversial cultural phenomenon in the UK. It spawned a punk subculture which expressed a youthful rebellion, characterized by distinctive styles of clothing and adornment (ranging from deliberately offensive T-shirts, leather jackets, studded or spiked bands and jewelry, as well as bondage and S&M clothes) and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies that have since been associated with the form.

By 1977 the influence of punk rock music and its subculture became more pervasive, spreading throughout various countries worldwide. It generally took root in local scenes that tended to reject affiliation with the mainstream. In the late 1970s, punk experienced its second wave. Acts that were not active during its formative years adopted the style. While at first punk musicians were not Gen Xers themselves (many of them were late Boomers, or Generation Jones), the fanbase for punk became increasingly Gen X-oriented as the earliest Xers entered their adolescence, and it therefore made a significant imprint on the cohort.

By the 1980s, faster and more aggressive subgenres such as hardcore punk (e.g., Minor Threat), street punk (e.g., the Exploited, NOFX) and anarcho-punk (e.g., Subhumans) became the predominant modes of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk often later pursued other musical directions, resulting in a broad range of spinoffs. This development gave rise to genres such as post-punk, new wave and later indie pop, alternative rock, and noise rock. Gen Xers were no longer simply the consumers of punk, they became the creators as well. By the 1990s, punk rock re-emerged into the mainstream. Punk rock and pop punk bands with Gen X members such as Green Day, Rancid, The Offspring, and Blink-182 brought widespread popularity to the genre.

Hard rock
Arguably in a similar way to punk, a sense of disillusionment, angst and anger catalysed hard rock and heavy metal to grow from the earlier influence of rock.

Post-punk
The energy generated by the punk movement launched a subsequent proliferation of weird and eclectic post-punk sub cultures, spanning new wave, goth, etc., and influencing the New Romantics.

Grunge

A notable example of alternative rock is grunge music and the associated subculture that developed in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Grunge song lyrics have been called the "...product of Generation X malaise". Vulture commented: "the best bands arose from the boredom of latchkey kids". "People made records entirely to please themselves because there was nobody else to please" commented producer Jack Endino.

Grunge lyrics are typically dark, nihilistic, angst-filled, anguished, and often addressing themes such as social alienation, despair and apathy. The Guardian wrote that grunge "didn't recycle banal cliches but tackled weighty subjects". Topics of grunge lyrics included homelessness, suicide, rape, broken homes, drug addiction, self-loathing, misogyny, domestic abuse and finding "meaning in an indifferent universe". Grunge lyrics tended to be introspective and aimed to enable the listener to see into hidden personal issues and examine depravity in the world. Notable grunge bands include: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden.

Hip hop

The golden age of hip hop refers to hip hop music made from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, typically by artists originating from the New York metropolitan area. The music style was characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence after the genre's emergence and establishment in the previous decade. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling eclectic.

Artists associated with the era include LL Cool J, Run–D.M.C., Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, KRS-One, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, Slick Rick, Ultramagnetic MC's, and the Jungle Brothers. Releases by these acts co-existed in this period with, and were as commercially viable as, those of early gangsta rap artists such as Ice-T, Geto Boys and N.W.A, the sex raps of 2 Live Crew and Too Short, and party-oriented music by acts such as Kid 'n Play, The Fat Boys, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and MC Hammer.

In addition to lyrical self-glorification, hip hop was also used as a form of social protest. Lyrical content from the era often drew attention to a variety of social issues, including afrocentric living, drug use, crime and violence, religion, culture, the state of the American economy, and the modern man's struggle. Conscious and political hip hop tracks of the time were a response to the effects of American capitalism and former President Reagan's conservative political economy. According to Rose Tricia, "In rap, relationships between black cultural practice, social and economic conditions, technology, sexual and racial politics, and the institution policing of the popular terrain are complex and in constant motion". Even though hip hop was used as a mechanism for different social issues, it was still very complex with issues within the movement itself.

There was also often an emphasis on black nationalism. Hip hop artists often talked about urban poverty and the problems of alcohol, drugs, and gangs in their communities. Public Enemy's most influential song, "Fight the Power", came out at this time; the song speaks up to the government, proclaiming that people in the ghetto have freedom of speech and rights like every other American.

Indie films

Gen Xers were largely responsible for the "indie film" movement of the 1990s, both as young directors and in large part as the film audiences which were fueling demand for such films. In cinema, directors Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, John Singleton, Spike Jonze, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, and Richard Linklater  have been called Generation X filmmakers. Smith is most known for his View Askewniverse films, the flagship film being Clerks, which is set in New Jersey circa 1994, and focuses on two convenience-store clerks in their twenties. Linklater's Slacker similarly explores young adult characters who were interested in philosophizing.

While not a member of Gen X himself, director John Hughes has been recognized as having created classic 1980s teen films with early Gen X characters which "an entire generation took ownership of", including The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

In France, a new movement emerged, the Cinéma du look, spearheaded by filmmakers Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax. Although not Gen Xers themselves, Subway (1985), 37°2 le matin (English: Betty Blue; 1986), and Mauvais Sang (1986) sought to capture on screen the generation's malaise, sense of entrapment, and desire to escape.

Franchise mega sequels
The birth of franchise mega-sequels in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction genres, such as the epic space opera Star Wars and the Halloween franchise, had a profound and notable cultural influence.

Literature
The literature of early Gen Xers is often dark and introspective. In the U.S., authors such as Elizabeth Wurtzel, David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis, and Douglas Coupland captured the zeitgeist of this generation. In France, Michel Houellebecq and Frédéric Beigbeder rank among major novelists whose work also reflect the dissatisfaction and melancholies of the cohort. In the UK, Alex Garland, author of The Beach (1996), further added to the genre.

Health problems
While previous research has indicated that the likelihood of heart attacks was declining among Americans aged 35 to 74, a 2018 study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation revealed that this did not apply to the younger half of that cohort (controlling for age, Generation X have not seen a reduction in heart attack risk, versus previous generations). Data from 28,000 patients from across the United States who were hospitalized for heart attacks between 1995 and 2014 showed that a growing proportion were between the ages of 35 and 54. The proportion of heart-attack patients in this age group at the end of the study was 32%, up from 27% at the start of the study. This increase is most pronounced among women, for whom the number rose from 21% to 31%. A common theme among those who suffered from heart attacks is that they also had high-blood pressure, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. These changes have been faster for women than for men. Experts suggest a number of reasons for this. Conditions such as coronary artery disease are traditionally viewed as a man's problem, and as such female patients are not considered high-risk. More often than in previous generations, Generation X women are both the primary caretakers of their families and full-time employees, reducing time for self-care.

Offspring
Generation X are usually the parents of Generation Z, and sometimes Millennials. Jason Dorsey, who works for the Center of Generational Kinetics, observed that like their parents from Generation X, members of Generation Z tend to be autonomous and pessimistic. They need validation less than the Millennials and typically become financially literate at an earlier age, as many of their parents bore the full brunt of the Great Recession.

title: Generation X