Changing Demography and Your Future

2007 was a Demographic Bombshell!

One of the biggest population shifts in the history of the United States is taking place right now. This huge change will affect everything from commerce, economics, politics, government, religion and healthcare. 

According to the United States Census 2007 was a record year for live births at 4,317,000. 2007 broke a long standing record of 4,300,000 that was set fifty years ago in 1957 by the Baby Boomer Generation. The peak of the Baby Boomer’s huge bell shaped curve is now fifty-two years old. We have learned a great deal from the Baby Boomers as they passed through the time continuum. Boomers had to be anticipated and accommodated as they aged. Education and healthcare infrastructures had to be built to serve their huge numbers. Are we ready to serve the new Generation Y and Generation Z boom? The answer is, probably not. Generation Y is a more complex generation then the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers started in 1945 and reached their apex in 1957. 1958-1961 remained strong four million plus birth years for the Boomers before the fertility trailed off to a low in 1964. Generation Y is different. It began in 1985, peaked in 1990 and then began a very slow sometimes undetectable decent for over fourteen years until it out numbered the Baby boomers. Now Generation Z born 2005 to present is in the news with record high numbers.

However the real news about 2007 is not the fact that it is the biggest birth year in the nation’s history but rather that twenty-five percent of those births, over one million, were derived from parents of a single cohort that represents only fourteen percent of our population, Latinos. And as if this is not profound enough another fact emerges because the Latino population in the United States is geographically selective. Most Latinos live in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey and New York. The United States population will experience a demographic/geographic shift like never before in our history. This will effect the consumption of everything and have a significant effect on healthcare. There are parts of our country that will see the biggest baby boom is our history and other parts that will see fertility turn off like a faucet. There will be parts of our nation that will be flush with children and other regions that will see the number of children fall off significantly.

I was recently at a Board of Education budget meeting for the school district that serves our area. The chairman was reviewing line items that represented unexpected savings and one of them that jumped off the page was a sharp reduction of the number of kindergarten teachers. It was a significant savings. When the chair was asked why fewer kindergarten teachers were needed he replied “We have a twenty-five percent drop in the enrollment of new kindergartners.”

A twenty-five percent drop is huge so it surprised me that no further comment was made. I stood up and asked if anyone on the board knew why there was a precipitous drop in the number of kindergarten kids. No one did but the chairman did offer that the housing boom in our towns had stopped. The real reason was simple. Fertility for non-Latinos had dropped like a stone and there were virtually no Latino households in our district. One of the significant ironies is the fact that our school district had just built a huge new middle school just in time for it to empty out and not be needed. Our district could be a case study for the need of demographic research and planning.

This same scenario will play out in healthcare and hospitals throughout the nation in the next ten to fifteen years. There will be areas that will have large vibrant maternity wards and pediatric centers and others especially in the Northeastern part of the country where they won’t be needed. This demonstrates the need and importance of regional demographic study and research.

On a bright note the nursing shortage that has plagued healthcare for the last decade show signs of abating. The huge Generation Y with its early peak in 1990 should deliver a huge number of eager to work entry level healthcare workers and nurses starting in a couple of years.

The healthcare demographic landscape will remain complex until further notice. Regional issues and attendant anomalies will be prevalent requiring careful planning and analysis. It is a good time to formulate a strategic plan based on good information.