User:CaptainOrbit/Sandbox

= Lucky Few = The Lucky Few is the name given (in a book named for them) to the generation born from 1929 through 1945. The Lucky Few generation has largely slipped between the cracks of history, sandwiched between the generation Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation (born between 1908 and 1928) and the Baby Boomers (born from 1946 through 1964). The Lucky Few were the first generation in American history smaller than the generation that preceded them, and one of the most fortunate generations of Americans who have ever lived. Eleven of the twelve men who have walked on the Moon (including astronaut Neil Armstrong) belong to the Lucky Few, as do civil rights pioneer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Elvis Presley, Martha Stewart, Senator John McCain, General Colin Powell, newsman Tom Brokaw, baseball greats Ted Williams and Hank Aaron, musicians Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, and movie stars like Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, Robert DeNiro, Mary Tyler Moore, Jack Nicholson or Elizabeth Taylor.

In childhood the Lucky Few lived with both parents more often than nearly any other generation in American history. Falling death rates left fewer of their parents widows and widowers, while divorce rates had not yet begun the steep rise that came later in the 20th century. Earlier generations had more widowed parents, and later generations had more single and divorced parents. In his book Birth and Fortune, Professor Richard Easterlin paid most attention to the Baby Boomers, but also did point out that people born during the Great Depression and World War Two grew up during difficult times. Easterlin believed that this early hardship caused the generation later called the Lucky Few to lower their expectations for opportunity and achievement in later life. When they emerged from schools in time for one of the largest, longest economic booms in U.S. economic history, however, their actual achievements so far outstripped these lowered expectations that the Lucky Few optimistically got married earlier than any other generation in the history of the country (half of all Lucky Few women married before their 20th birthdays) and became, along with some of the younger members of the Greatest Generation, the parents of the Baby Boom that started in 1946.

Lucky Few men made the biggest leap in college graduation of any generation during the 20th century. This fact, combined with the early marriages and childbearing of Lucky Few women, meant that the gender gap in higher education opened wider among the Lucky Few than for any preceding or following generation. Owing to their advanced education, Lucky Few men also became the first generation of the century to find predominantly white-collar rather than blue-collar or farming careers, and to pioneer many of the great corporations that rose up during the post-war period. Lucky Few giants of business and industry include Jack Welch of General Electric, television and entertainment mogul [Michael Eisner]], media tycoon Ted Turner, Citicorp CEO John S. Reed who pioneered ATM machines, and the founder of Visa International, Dee Ward Hock. The careers of Lucky Few men were formed during the first explosive expansion of corporate America in the second half of the 20th century, as roughly 60 million new corporate jobs were being created in comparison to only about 10 million new independent, self-employed entrants into the labor force. The archetypal Organization Man captured

They also became the first generation of men to move out of union employment as they grew older, rather than becoming increasingly unionized with age and seniority like earlier generations.

http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/demography/book/978-1-4020-8850-6 http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/2008-06-24-lucky-few_N.htm http://www.prb.org/Articles/2008/luckyfew.aspx http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/543663/ http://afs.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/0095327X08318487v1