Better off before

New Zealand historian David Thomson was one of the first people to write about the “phenomenon” of the “lucky generation” born during the period from the late 1920s through the 1930s according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Happiness and contentment are never guaranteed, of course, but in Australia the statistics suggest you had a better chance of achieving them if you were born in the decade before World War II than at any other time in the past century. In Thomson’s 1991 book Selfish Generations he writes: “The rules which cause income to flow between age groups are being altered constantly, to the persisting advantage of those born in some years.” He noted with a tinge of bitterness that in terms of government policy the result was: “To be born in the 1920s and 1930s is to be protected; the later one is born, the more expendable one becomes.” Thomson was concerned that the future of the welfare state might be at risk, because its favouring of one generation would eventually lead to resentment from subsequent ones.