Consumption from 1994 to 2004 : Disentangling Cohort and Period Effects Examining Overconsumption, Competitive Consumption, and Conscious

, 644, November 2012Taken together, Robert Putnam’s work on the decline of social capital (2000) and Juliet Schor’s insights about the rise of “the new consumerism” (1999) suggest a shift in values in which our responsibilities as citizens have taken a backseat to our desires as consumers. This article complicates this shift in civic and con-sumer culture by examining generational differences in overconsumption, competitive consumption, and con-scious consumption between 1994 and 2004. Using survey proxies for these concepts from the annual DDB Needham Life Style Study, the authors find that Generation X exhibits the highest rates of overcon-sumption and competitive consumption while also displaying the lowest rates of conscious consumption. Notably, the trends for these three aspects of con-sumer behavior vary in terms of overtime stability, general tendency, and economic responsiveness. These differing patterns of spending and consumption have far-reaching implications for society as a whole, particularly as the Civic Generation fades, the Boomers move out of the workforce, and Generation X becomes mature and culturally dominant.