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Baby Boomers Don't Have a Stronger Work Ethic Than Later Generations, Says Study (sciencedaily.com)
A team of U.S. researchers from Wayne State University in Detroit have published research in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology that dispels the popular belief that baby boomers have a greater work ethic than people born a decade or two later. Science Daily reports: The economic success of the United States and Europe around the turn of the 20th to the 21st century is often ascribed to the so-called Protestant work ethic of members of the baby boomer generation born between 1946 and 1964. They are said to place work central in their lives, to avoid wasting time and to be ethical in their dealings with others. Their work ethic is also associated with greater job satisfaction and performance, conscientiousness, greater commitment to the organization they belong to and little time for social loafing. The media and academia often suggest that baby boomers endorse higher levels of work ethic than the younger so-called Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and Millennials (born between 1981 and 1999). [Keith Zabel, the lead U.S. researcher, and his team] compiled a dataset of all published studies that have ever used a U.S. sample to measure and report on the Protestant work ethic. Studies included in the meta-analysis had to mention the average age of the people surveyed. In all, 77 studies and 105 different measures of work ethic were examined using an analysis method stretching over three phases, each phase offered more precise measurement of generational cohorts. The analysis found no differences in the work ethic of different generations. These findings support other studies that found no difference in the work ethics of different generations when considering different variables, such as the hours they work or their commitment to family and work. Zabel's team did however note a higher work ethic in studies that contained the response of employees working in industry rather than of students.
That was always the criticism of the Baby Boomers. That they didn't have the same work ethic as their parents.
That's the Great Generation that rebuilt the world after WWII. Baby boomers came later with their loud music, pot smoking and premarital sex.
take everything with a grain of salt. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science Study Finds: Studies Are Wrong:
The "X" generation. Another hard-working generation. [... ] Millennials have been doted over, helicoptered,
So actually you mean that the X generation was a bunch of idiots who poured vast amounts of misplaced work into really terrible ways of raising kids, right?
You know, I think about all the things millennials see. They see the Boomers giving themselsves vast pensions ands benefits, they see those people pulling up the ladders they used to climb, they see pension funds getting raided by greedy corporate types and no one lifts a finger to stop them, the boomers have used their wealth to price them out of ever being able to own a home and so on and so forth.
Why should someone sell their soul to a coproration who would lay them off next quarter so they can what? Pay exorbitant rates to a landlord who's sole bit of business sense was being born 50 years earlier? Or keep on topping up that pension like a good little drone only for a Philip Green of the world to give the entire thing to his wife as a dividend? Well it's either that or enter the "gig economy" which seems to be determined to undo the last 150 years of hard earned worker's rights because App!
SJW n. One who posts facts.