BABY BOOMERS<i> by Paul C. Light (Norton: $19.95) </i>

For all the polls, studies and cute appellations (from Yuppie to Dink--dual-income, no kids) the baby-boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, is still a mystery, disunited and defying stereotypes. Nevertheless, the probing continues, motivated by political and advertising strategists eager to understand the generation and thus garner its votes and dollars and by authors and journalists who sense that baby boomers are unique: educated more uniformly than their predecessors (by mass schooling and a newly pervasive mass medium, television), more melancholic (younger baby boomers face 3 to 10 times the risk of major depression than their grandparents, government-funded studies recently have shown) and more economically disadvantaged (unable to afford their parents’ homes and uncertain about whether they can count on Social Security and Medicare).

Paul Light, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, has set out in this thorough and careful study to correct prevailing stereotypes. Yuppies and Dinks, for one, are only the more fortunate members of the generation, Light points out: Four out of 10 boomers made less than $10,000 in 1985. Even the term baby boomers is overly simplistic, Light contends, for not all boomers matured in the same political ethos: “Some were on the front-lines of the 1960s, both here and in Vietnam, some merely watched on television, and still others have yet to rent the video cassette.”

Light’s attempt to be thorough occasionally leads him to vacillate between alternative visions of the generation and its future in a way that will confuse some readers. After pointing out that America’s social welfare system might be too strained in 2030 to meet the needs of elderly baby boomers, for example, Light asserts that “baby boomers may find the final quarter of life the most rewarding.” He bases this conclusion on social science studies which hold that longevity “increases the potential structural complexity of a person’s social networks.”

This is not so much a contradiction, however, as a reflection of Light’s belief that the baby boomers have the power to shape their own future--by anticipating and correcting social service problems, for instance. Some of those accustomed to the current crystal ball-gazing about social trends might be put off by Light’s conviction that there are no certain futures, but it is the source of this book’s complexity and strength.