Nowadays it's not rare to live with four generations together. Conflicts have always existed, but they are more obvious, actually.A century ago, no one could preview the inversion of the population pyramid, as to know thinner at the base and fatter at the top. The number of old people is increasing all over the world. Population projections confirm that this evolution due to better food, life hygiene, and medical care will continue.
Fewer children are born each year. The general fertility of humans shows a significant drop, and birth control is higher. The children wish for a lower wage with a better social life. Slacking work opportunities tend to make people stay studying longer and to postpone marriage and parenthood.
Strange enough, in spite of higher life expectancy in better health, people will retire earlier. The working class is narrowing seriously, bringing financial incomes of some governments in lower rates. Globaly the expectation is to keep so long as possible people to work.
More frequently than before, aging persons are considered a troublesome giving group; undeniably, at older ages, health deteriorates, which means we can expect more people to be confronted with diseases, illness, or invalidity. But before reaching this group, aged people can be very useful in different economic activities with their high professional experiences as luggage.
The result is various generations having lived in very distant periods coexist. The oldest grew up in adolescence years during the marking world war and evolved in the golden sixties, while the youngest progressed in what we could call an acceleration of history. In the last decades, technologies and general knowledge never extended so quickly as before, resulting in very divergent artistic, cultural, social, and economic views between the class ages, making communication more problematic.
Fortunately, more and more intergenerational meetings are organized, and probably young and old can try to understand each other while exchanging experiences: wisdom for one, high technology experiences for the other.
