For example, in U.S. contemporary economics, Harry Dent, a University of South Carolina and Harvard Business School graduate and Fortune 100 consultant, has popularized the baby-boomer spending wave theory.
[1] According to Dent,[2] the stock-market decline of 2008 was a result of baby boomers aging past their peak spending years.
In 2002 Dan Arnold echoed this theory in his book The Great Bust Ahead, with the big spenders being 45- to 54-year-olds, and their numbers peaking in 2011–2012.
Other authors, such as Schieber and Shoven,[3] suggest that the gradual peaking of the social security trust fund in the United States will occur around the 2007–2009 time period.
While the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation did coincide with the most severe recession in the United States since 1980, the subsequent recovery was strong, with the unemployment rate falling to 5% by the end of 2015.