No Boomer Generation president (kind of sarcasm)

[Metaphorical]

58. Generational Confusion

In 1991, Sociologists William Strauss and Niel Howe (S&H) wrote a book called The Fourth Turning, where they introduced the idea that generations tend to follow distinct patterns, and where they first laid out all of the Generation A, B, C nonsense going back some 400 years. Their thesis was that population patterns (based primarily on a demographic measure called adjusted fertility rate, which is more or less the number of children who survived past infancy of a woman over her lifetime) followed a clear sinusoidal period of around 36 years (peak to trough and back). Their contention was that because this was a regular cycle, it should have been measured from midpoint to midpoint In this case from around 1946 to around 1964, with the midpoint peak being in 1955.

Now, this is complicated by five factors:
1. The Baby Boom generation was anomalous in that it marked a period where fertility rates overall fell from an average of about 6-7 children per family, to the more recent regime where it was about 1-2 children per family.
2. Infant Mortality was also in the midst of falling, which also affected the average life expectancy (which rose proportionately to the drop off of infant mortality.
3. This marked the period during which women's rights became a major societal factor - more women were better educated, which has a major impact on the number of children that they have.
4. The pill was introduced in 1958, which caused the number of children born to drop dramatically.
5. The population went from largely agrarian in 1900 to mainly urban by 2024, where the cost of raising children has grown dramatically.

I've long been of the belief that, because of this, the "Boomers" should have been measured from about 1936 to1954. This is consonant with cultural phenomenon - most of the first real rockers were all born in within a few years of one another between 1935 and 1938, while 1955 saw the birth of most of the major leading figures in the tech boom such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc., - these were major inflection points where birth rates hit their nadir and zenith respectively. By that measure, Obama and Harris are in the same cohort both temporally and socially.

It's worth noting as well that after 1971, the birth rate dropped down to about 1.75 children per family, below the replacement rate of 2.1 children, and it only touched that replacement rate again (for a year) around 2007. Since then the birth rate has been dropping steadily, and is now down to 1.66 in the US, and outside of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricon is about 1.45 globally.

Also, if you've ever wondered, this has largely been warped into the Race Replacement Theory by the MAGAt conspiracy theorists- that the population is declining, and soon all the brown people from the Tropics will emigrate to take their place as part of some vast conspiracy. There is a (small) grain of truth in that - the only place where population is still above the replacement rate is along the equator to about 30 degrees north and south of it, primarily because most of these cultures are (or at least have been) largely agrarian, meaning that the factors given above are only just now coming into play for these populations.

China's population peaked last year, India's is still growing but should peak by 2030 (both have negative birth rates but still rising life expectancy and falling infant mortality rates). By 2050, most of the world should have falling fertility rates, and by 2100, the population should end up peaking at around 9.5 billion people. US population will likely have stalled at around 400 million, and will be declining by 2050.

So, anyway, I personally believe both Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are GenX. Their values are definitely not Boomers (Born in 1963, Im about halfway between the two, and I do not consider myself a Boomer either). It doesn't make that much difference after about 1971 - until about 2007, when there was a decided drop off of birth rates that I think coincided with the start of the Great Recession.