The age cohort that began work in the decades surrounding 1991 is now in its 50s and 60s. This is the urban mass affluent population slice that saw its boats lift with the giant wave of economic growth and prosperity that the economic reforms of 1991 unleashed. You just had to be in the right place at the right time with the willingness and ability for sustained hard work, and economic growth, job opportunities and competition did the rest. People of this generation had grown up at a time of peak socialism with the state intervention and dysfunction making everyday life difficult. They were afraid of sliding back into genteel middle-class poverty if they did not work hard and build careers and assets.
