Next America 2: Bad Data Makes Gen-X Invisible

This post is part of a series summarizing and reflecting on The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown from the perspective of a church leader.

Section Summary: Chapter 2, Boomers and Millennials

The chapter continues by elaborating some of the characteristics of the Boomer and Millennial generations. This chapter is lighter on facts than the previous one. For people who try to keep abreast of demography, there isn’t much new here:

• Boomers are entering retirement age and are about to become the largest generation in retirement. 1 in 5 Americans are projected to be 65 or older in 2030, up from 1 in 7 now.
• The number of seniors ages 85 and older is expected to more than triple between now and 2050 to 19 million.
• More than 4 in 10 of today’s twentysomethings have returned home to live with their parent(s) at some stage of their young adult lives.
• Nearly 9 in 10 Millennials say they already have or one day will have enough money to meet their financial needs. No other generation is nearly as optimistic.

This chapter appears to exist in order to set up the drama of the book: the “generational showdown. ” Unfortunately, as I prepared my summary for this chapter, it became clear to me that the author’s focus on Boomers and Millennials doesn’t do justice to the demographic data.

Everybody knows that there was a baby boom for about ten years following World War II. One would think that sorting the generations by year would be a simple matter of equity, in which each generation would be calculated over roughly the same time frame. But that isn’t how The Next America calculates the generations. On p. 201 it’s clearly stated

The Baby Boom Generation refers to those born from 1946 to 1964; Generation X refers to those born from 1965 to 1980; and the Millennial Generation refers to those adults born after 1980… No chronological end point for their generation has yet been fixed, nor has the zeitgeist coined a term for their successor generation.

In a book which cites “Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts” on p. viii, this is a shockingly bad analysis of demographic data.

By these calculations, the Baby Boomer generation spans 19 birth years and Generation X only 16, while the Millennials are counted over 33 birth years. The data have been manipulated so that the Millennial generation appears larger than it actually is in comparison with Generation X. The birth rate chart above makes clear that if Generation X and the Millennial generation were calculated using equal time spans, they would be roughly equally sized.

Is it because the author is a Boomer and his children are Millennials that he has embraced this skewed perspective? “Millennials and Boomers are the lead characters in the looming generational showdown by dint of their vast number and strategic location in the life cycle… They’re also each other’s children and parents.” So opens the second chapter of The Next America, which I am now reading with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

Churchwork Reflections

As you can tell from the summary above, I found this chapter less than compelling. I found a clearer analysis of the generations at, of all places, Ad Age.

The Ad Age article makes a few things clear:

• Generationally speaking, there are more Boomers than Millennials and more Millennials than Generation X-ers.
• However, the size difference between the Millennials and Generation X is not all that large.
• A better book than The Next America would have taken more than two generations into consideration. (Ok, this last bullet is editorializing.)

Looking around the church makes one more thing clear: speaking anecdotally, the demographics within the church do not reflect the demographics beyond the church. The data make clear that there are only about 8% fewer Generation X-ers than Boomers in society, and only about 5% fewer Millennials. How many churches do you know where the demography of the church reflects these numbers? Any?

I apologize to older generations who are not being counted either in The Next America nor in the Ad Age infographic. In trying to find data to shed light on The Next America thesis, I stopped at the Boomer and Millennial generations, but I don’t want to overlook those who were born earlier. I will try to be more comprehensive in future posts.

From Reflection to Action

My takeaway is that it will be important to lift up more comprehensive demographic data in the face of a popular book which purports to share facts but does not adhere to high standards for accuracy and analysis. I’m still planning to continue with the series, and I do think the Next America book will have lessons for the church’s future. I’m just casting a more skeptical eye at it these days.

What do you think? Am I being over-sensitive because I belong to Generation X, or is this a real problem with the book’s thesis?