GENERATIONS – Journal of the American Society on Aging 58 | Fall 2017 T he last couple of decades have been difcult for most Americans, especially the white work- ing class. Growing unemployment, opiate use, and mental despair, including suicides, seem trigger- ed by a sense of exclusion in a rapidly changing America (Hochschild, 2016). Across the country, poverty concentrates in the red states, wealth in blue states, with more single mothers, low-birth- weight babies, and industrial pollution in red states than in any others. The problem transcends race: blacks and Latinos live on average four to six years longer in blue states than in red states (Burd-Sharps, Lewis, and Martins, 2008). Across generations, social mobility also is decreasing. While 90 percent of Baby Boomers earned more than their parents, that number is expected to drop to 50 percent among Millenni- als (Chetty et al., 2017). Sandwiched between these two cohorts, Generation Xers have fared the worst: “ . . . as one of the most highly edu- cated generations, but yet, not since the Great Depression have more young adults had to experience a migration back to their parents’ nest to make ends meet” (Crowley, 2003). Our findings on the chronic health conditions of Generation X corroborate Hochschild’s observa- tions about the declining mental and physical health of the white working class. Yet despite the plight of whites, Latinos and blacks have fared even worse. The health profiles of U.S.–born middle-class Latinos are often worse than those of working-class foreign- born co-ethnics. Despite the declining fortunes of the white working class, the median house- hold wealth of whites is still thirteen times greater than that of blacks, while Hispanic pov- erty remains the most severe as more than 17 mil- lion Hispanic children—one in three—live in households with income below the poverty line (Reeves and Cuddy, 2015). Generations of inequality have taken a toll on the health of successive generations of blacks abstract Using data from the 2015 National Health Interview Survey, this article explores the relation- ship between socioeconomic status (SES), nativity, and health in white, black, and Latino Generation Xers. It finds that the rates of non-communicable, chronic disorders, disability, and mental health vary across groups, with Latinos and blacks having the worst health outcomes. The authors’ research findings lend support to the Immigrant Health Paradox in that U.S.-born groups tend to have worse health than foreign- born groups, and results confirm the Hispanic Middle Class Health Paradox, in that low SES foreign-born Latinos have better health than U.S.-born middle-class co-ethnics. | key words: Generation X, Hispanic Health Paradox, Middle Class Hispanic Health Paradox Generation X and the Future Health of Latinos By Norma Fuentes-Mayorga and Giovani Burgos What do the Hispanic Health Paradox and the Middle Class Hispanic Health Paradox tell us about the interweaving of economics, health, and racialization?