Month: January 2012

Latest Numbers for Generation X

This is from Neil Howe at Lifecourse.com:

 

We ran these number per Census as of July of this year for everyone age 18+.  They are cut exactly according to our birthyear boundaries:
G.I. (born 1901-1924), 4.5 million
Silent (born 1925-1942), 26.2 million
Boomer (born 1943-1960), 65.6 million
[X], 88.5 million
Millennial (born 1982-2004) 18+, 52.0 million
Total: 236.8 million.
Subtract this from the current total U.S. pop (around 311.8 million) gives you 75.0 million under age 18.  That’s about 4.2 million per cohort, which is just under the recent birth per year totals.  Again give a bit of allowance for immigration.  So that fits.
Also, nearly 2/3 of these cohorts under age 18 are Millennials, which gives you nearly 100 million total Millennials–so that fits.  The remaining 25-30 million are Homelanders.

Generation X Report: Active, Balanced and Happy

The University of Michigan has apparently been surveying a large group of [X] for some time and just released a report on their findings. Here is the blurb from the site:

For more than two decades, a loyal group of young Americans have participated in a national study to allow the nation to understand the thinking and the life experiences of Generation X. This web site reflects the thousands of hours of time and effort that LSAY participants have put into completing questionnaires, taking tests, and sharing their information about new addresses, new names, and new members of their family. We hope that the LSAY will continue to monitor the history and the future of Generation X for years to come and we have attempted to make this web site a useful place for staying in touch with the study and sharing the results of this work.

LSAY stands for Longitudinal Study of American Youth and it looks like they have been surveying these folks since 1987!

The report findings are interesting but not terribly surprising for those who follow generational theory. Gen X’ers continue to strive for work/life balance and that includes an active and healthy social life. I found the happiness index to be encouraging:

The cool thing about this report is that they say they are going to produce them quarterly and it will be fascinating to see the other issues they delve into. It would be really interesting to compare their survey results with their current (Millennial) students’ answers.