How Long's a Generation? Millennials, Boomers, etc.
I read a lot in the news about Millennials. You might see a lot of the stories, too. Many of them have headlines like, "Millennials Are Killing Applebee's", "Millennials Are Killing the Doorbell Industry", etc. Aside from the Millennial generation's apparent murder spree against things older people hold dear, who are the Millennials?
By common definition in the US Millennials are the generation born between 1981-1996. They're the people who were growing up (as adolescents) at the turn of the millennium. The age group before, Generation X, or Gen X for short, were born between 1965-1980. Before them was the Baby Boom generation, born 1946-1964, so called because they were part of an enormous increase in birthrates in the US following World War II.
Because these age groups are called generations you'd presume that members of each typically are children of the one before. Except that's not the case. In articles about Millennials- at least the ones where they aren't being blamed for killing something, like golf or cable TV- you find that Millennials' parents are typically Boomers. What happened to the Gen Xers?
It's not just that Gen Xers are always skipped over (that's the origin of the name!). It's a problem with how short the generations are. The Baby Boom generation spanned 19 years. Gen X and Millennials, 16. But the average age of parents at childbirth is much greater than 16 or 19 years.
How much greater? I wondered. So I did a bit of research. I found an article at the Pew Research Center which showed that the average age of a woman's first birth in the US in 2015 was 26.4.
That's actually at the low end of all developed nations, according to OECD data presented in the article. The median was 28.8 and the oldest, in South Korea, was 30.1.
Another interesting article I found was published in the New York Times last year, "The Age That Women Have
Babies: How a Gap Divides America". It shows there's a difference of almost 7 years in average maternal age based on education. In 2016 women with college degrees on average had their first child at 30.3 while those without college degrees first gave birth at 23.8. For college educate women that age of 30+ is closer to two of these 16-19 year generations than it is to one!
Furthermore, these figures count a woman's average age at the birth of her first child. The average number of children born per woman in the US is 2.2, so most kids were born to mothers even older than these figures. A generation doesn't even last a generation anymore.
By common definition in the US Millennials are the generation born between 1981-1996. They're the people who were growing up (as adolescents) at the turn of the millennium. The age group before, Generation X, or Gen X for short, were born between 1965-1980. Before them was the Baby Boom generation, born 1946-1964, so called because they were part of an enormous increase in birthrates in the US following World War II.
Because these age groups are called generations you'd presume that members of each typically are children of the one before. Except that's not the case. In articles about Millennials- at least the ones where they aren't being blamed for killing something, like golf or cable TV- you find that Millennials' parents are typically Boomers. What happened to the Gen Xers?
It's not just that Gen Xers are always skipped over (that's the origin of the name!). It's a problem with how short the generations are. The Baby Boom generation spanned 19 years. Gen X and Millennials, 16. But the average age of parents at childbirth is much greater than 16 or 19 years.
How much greater? I wondered. So I did a bit of research. I found an article at the Pew Research Center which showed that the average age of a woman's first birth in the US in 2015 was 26.4.
That's actually at the low end of all developed nations, according to OECD data presented in the article. The median was 28.8 and the oldest, in South Korea, was 30.1.
Another interesting article I found was published in the New York Times last year, "The Age That Women Have
Babies: How a Gap Divides America". It shows there's a difference of almost 7 years in average maternal age based on education. In 2016 women with college degrees on average had their first child at 30.3 while those without college degrees first gave birth at 23.8. For college educate women that age of 30+ is closer to two of these 16-19 year generations than it is to one!
Furthermore, these figures count a woman's average age at the birth of her first child. The average number of children born per woman in the US is 2.2, so most kids were born to mothers even older than these figures. A generation doesn't even last a generation anymore.