Word: boom
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...decade ago Mexico seemed on the verge of prosperity. Its vast oil reserves sent the economy into overdrive, and the government took full credit for the boom. Then came the tumble in energy prices, a mounting foreign debt and the yearly addition of nearly 1 million people to the work force. In September 1985 an earthquake devastated Mexico City, leaving 20,000 dead and 100,000 homeless. The illusion of well-being was supplanted by a brutal struggle to survive...
Just as the first members of the baby boom are settling into middle age, here comes the downsized baby bust -- and the scramble to adjust to an era of smaller, leaner and less in most aspects of American society. Baby busters are children born between 1965 and 1980, when the U.S. birthrate took a dive, thanks to the Pill, legalized abortion and shifts away from the traditional family. Result: total births in the U.S. dropped from 72.5 million during the postwar baby-boom years to 56.6 million in the bust generation. In 1975 the birthrate sank to 14.6 newborns...
Since the highest involvement in crime occurs among young men from the ages of 15 to 18, urbanologists like Alfred Blumstein of Pittsburgh's Carnegie- Mellon University expected the crime rate to decline along with the number of teenagers. The tail end of the baby boom reached age 16 in 1977, and Blumstein predicted that the crime rate would top out a few years later, followed by a peak in the prison population as the younger hoods got enough convictions to land in jail. Sure enough, after 1980 the crime rate began declining on schedule, and the U.S. prison population...
Closest to the altar room a group of male Hare Krishnas, singing this mantra, were bobbing about in a mild form of skinhead slamdancing, the crowd echoing them with a subdued backup. Cymbals clanged rhythmically, accompanied by the slurping bass boom of the zeppelin-shaped drums which hung from the devotees necks. Hanging on the walls were brightly colored oil paintings of similar goings-on the same drums, haircuts and robes, with the addition of the blue-skinned figure of Krishna...
Some experts believe the economic climate is about to turn propitious for welfare reform. The competition for jobs that resulted when the baby-boom generation reached working age is becoming a thing of the past. In the 1990s fewer people -- those born during the baby bust, the period of low birth rates that began in 1965 -- will be looking for jobs. Says the Domestic Policy Council: "The baby bust will make it easier to lift America's welfare recipients up from dependency. Plenty of jobs will be available in the private economy, and at wage rates that will provide...