When Aetna asked people from three generations -- Millennials, Generation Xers and Baby Boomers -- which was the healthiest, nearly half of the respondents from each group said their generation.
In a survey of 1,800 Americans aged 25 to 64, 45 percent of people declared their own generation to be the healthiest to date, while 32 percent named their parents' generation and 23 percent named the generation younger than them.
The survey, conducted by the marketing firm Harris Interactive, is part of Aetna's new campaign called "What's your healthy?" As the survey results show, the insurer's senior market VP Robert Mead said, "everybody has a different definition of being healthy."
The survey found some other notable health perceptions and practices differing among generations.
Almost a quarter of Baby Boomers, Americans ages 49 to 64, defined "healthy" as getting recommended screenings and checkups, more than twice that of GenXers (those ages 37-48) and Millennials (those ages 25-36).
Millennials, meanwhile, were 25 percent more likely to define healthy as based on having good eating habits and getting regular exercise compared to GenXers and Boomers.
In coping with stress -- behaviors that can have positive and negative consequences on health (and healthcare costs) -- Millennials "are far more likely than other age groups to reach for alcohol," with 37 percent admitting as much in the survey. And both Millennials and GenXers are more likely than Boomers to turn to junk food during times of stress, with about half of the respondents from each younger demographic reporting that practice.
More than half of Boomers surveyed said they'd tell their younger selves "not to sweat the small stuff," while only 43 percent of GenXers and 36 percent of Millennials considered "the small stuff" not worth sweating.
As for some of the causes of stress across generations, commuting "to the office in the morning doesn't appear to be as stressful as actually being in the office all day," the survey found. Only 11 percent of those polled cited driving as a major stress factor, while 27 percent listed the workplace as their prime source of stress, 12 percent listed their extended family and 11 percent listed their spouse or partner.