The huge Generation Y, born 1985 to 2004, is now making its mark in college enrollment as the share of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high in October 2008, driven by a surge in enrollments at community colleges, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Generation Y would make its presence know in this arena because one of the early peaks in the Generation Y birth data came in 1990 with well over four million live births. These kids are now nineteen years old and ripe for college. Age Curve Consulting has bee watching the consumption of this “bigger than the Baby Boomer “generation very closely and Generation Y has not disappointed us. According to Pew Research Center almost 11.5 million students or about 40% of all Generation Y young adults ages 18 to 24 are enrolled in college as of October 2008 (Newest data available). Both the total number and the percentage are the highest ever. The spike in junior college would follow as the four year schools have their pick of the best and brightest and the two year schools take the overflow. In 2007 there were 3.1 million young adults in community colleges but by 2008 that number had swelled by 300,000 students or 11.8% of all the 18 to 24 year olds. Enrollment in the four year schools remained flat during this same period.

So what is the employment picture for these 18- to 24- years- olds? It’s bleak. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics only 46.1% of them were employed as of September 2009, the lowest number ever since this data has been gathered starting in 1946.

The trend to two year community colleges has its financial advantages. Compared to four year public colleges the cost is on average a third less and compared to four year private schools the cost is about two thirds less (College Board, 2009). Is the trend to the cheaper college a product, at least in part, of the recession? Yes, without a doubt.

Is there a silver lining to this grey cloud of high unemployment and difficult economy for the large beleaguered Generation Y? Yes, for one they are graduating high school and attending college in record numbers. Education is a good thing. So if they can’t find work let them stay in school. The economy will rebound especially as China begins to falter because of its ill-fated one child only policy and manufacturing begins to find its way back to the States as China runs out of labor. The United States will have the biggest, best and most educated labor force in its history, another good thing. There’s more. Back in the early 1980’s when the 1957 peak of the Baby Boomers found the employment and economic climate to be very unfriendly what did they do? They opened their own businesses by the millions, so they could eat. Necessity is the mother of invention. We can’t wait to see what Generation Y will invent as they face the same challenges.    

Recently my wife, two daughters and I were invited to a home coming party for a middle-aged Latino friend, Angel, who had been away in the Philippines for several months on special military assignment for the United States Air force. The house was packed and we were definitely the non-Latino minority because every grandmother, grandfather, mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, in-law, cousin, niece, nephew and friend was in attendance to welcome Angel home. It was an interesting mix. My demographic instincts took over. 

The older first generation folks who were born in Puerto Rico spoke English but with a definite Spanish accent. When they spoke among themselves they seemed to favor speaking Spanish. The second generation, Angel’s counterparts, spoke perfect English with a slight hint of a Spanish accent. The remaining third and forth generation young adults, teens and young children chattered away in English and so I’m told know little or no Spanish. There was of course a young anomaly or two who was a recent arrival who spoke Spanish. I was impressed with how quickly these Latino immigrants assimilate.  My German ancestors who came to the States in 1840 took one hundred years to break away from the old culture, but these Latinos seem to have done it in a single twenty year generation. Amazing.  

Demography aside, the food was wonderful, indigenous dishes I can’t pronounce but could certainly eat. Desert was cake and ice cream so Angel summoned the entire group into the dinning room for the ceremonious cutting of a huge sheet cake. Then a wonderful thing happened that I would never have expected. The entire family spontaneously sang (belted out) the Star Spangled Banner. 

Pew Research just completed an interesting study called:

Latino Children: A Majority are U.S.- Born Offspring of Immigrants. By Richard Fry and Jeffrey S. Passel 

Here are a few of the interesting findings that shed light on this dynamic group. Latinos now make up 22% of all kids under the age of eighteen in the United States, up from 9% in 1980. A whopping 52% of the Nation’s 16 million Latino kids are considered second generation, meaning that they are the native born offspring of at least one foreign born parent. The Latino immigration from Mexico, Central and South America began in earnest around 1980 and has only recently tapered off.

About 11% of Latino kids are themselves first generation meaning that they were born outside of the United States and about 37% are third generation meaning that they are U.S. born of U.S. born parents.    

Projections by the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that by 2025 nearly three in ten children in the United States will be of Latino ancestry. While on the surface this number might alarm some people it actually is very healthy from a demographic stand point. As immigrants go Latinos bring a lot to the table. They assimilate very quickly, are hard working, have strong family ties and are culturally very compatible with main stream America. It would be difficult to design a better immigrant. 

In 2007 there were 4,317,000 babies born in the United States, a record year. Twenty-five percent of those babies were Latino, precipitated by four-teen percent of the U.S. overall population. The United States is the only Western culture and industrialized nation in the world with above replacement level fertility (2.2), thanks to the Latino contribution. This means that unlike Asia or the European Union the United States will have a viable labor force for decades to come.

Forty Years after Woodstock, a Gentler Generation Gap 

It had to be one of the most divisive times in American history. Family was divided against family. No, this is not a reference to the Civil War, but rather it is a description of the turbulent 1960’s and early 1970’s in the United States. 

It was the Baby Boomers against the Silent Generation and the G.I. Generation, Hippies fighting the establishment, the young versus the old, the people under thirty against the people over thirty, war against peace, long hair versus short hair, parents against kids, kids against parents, authority opposed to chaos, protestors clashing with police, tolerance versus intolerance, the right against the left and above all: rock and roll against everything else music. It was a clash of cultures on a grand scale. No one really understood what caused the divide but it was certain that the Vietnam War played an important part. It was an unstable time that divided families and broke up homes, a time of elevated crime and drug use. This period was defined by its music and the exclamation point was a rock concert attended by over 500,000 people, Woodstock.   

The Pew Research Center released a very interesting and revealing Social and Demographic Trends Report in August 2009. It apparently was timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the famous outdoor rock concert and music festival, Woodstock. 

Pew polled a nationally representative sample of 1,815 people age 16 and over from July 20 to August 2, 2009.  The results of the poll were surprising and counter intuitive. Apparently serious fractures still exist between young and old adults in their work ethic, respect/tolerance of others, acceptance of technology, religion, moral values and political views. But according to Pew “...this modern generation gap is a much more subdued affair than the one that raged in the 1960s, for relatively few Americans of any age sees it as a source of conflict- either in society at large or in their own families.” 

So if the fractures still exist, where is the conflict? Where are the protestors, the sit-ins, the mass marches? According to the Pew research there is one major aspect of the culture that enjoys a marked difference when compared to the clash of the 60s. We all like the same music; rock and roll. Two-thirds of the people polled by Pew stated that they favored rock and roll over country, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, classical, jazz and salsa. Back in 1966 a Harris poll showed that only 4% of people twenty-one and older stated that rock and roll was their favorite kind of music making rock and roll the most unpopular music of the day. Like Dylan sang “The times, they are a changing...” 

So does the common music sooth the savage in the different generations? Perhaps, Pew states it in a borrowed phrase: “… the generations appear to have found a way to disagree without being disagreeable.” Are we really a kinder gentler nation? It would appear so. According to a 1969 Gallup poll 74% of the public thought there were major conflicts between generations compared to Pew’s 2009 findings that show that 79% of Americans felt that there were major divides today between the perspective of younger and older adults.  Clearly we have more conflict today with surprisingly less acrimony. 

Could it be that the answer lies in the within the American family? Do Boomer parents get along better with their kids than their parents got along with them? The evidence would support a resounding yes. When asked, the Pew respondents supported this position. Only 10% of parents of older children reported that they often have major disagreements with their teenage or young adult kids. This is compared and contrasted to 19% that stated that they themselves routinely had major disagreements with their parents. Maybe Boomers are just cooler parents and maybe today’s issues just aren’t the stuff worth fighting for. 

A closer look at the American home could reveal some answers and give us an insight into what is perceived as differences between generations. The biggest differences according to the Pew poll fell predictably into two areas: technology and music. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents said that there was significant difference in the way young and old used new technology, the internet and computers. No surprise there. It would be hard to imagine a heated generational exchange erupting over a conflict between using email over texting or even Facebook versus LinkedIn. What about the music differences? Nine out of ten of the people polled cited huge differences between young and old preferences. But remember, its all rock and roll. So where is the divide? Is it worth hunkering down for a battle between oldies and pop? 

Who has better values?  The respondents to the Pew poll were very clear in their answer. With respect to three of the four values tested the public, regardless of age, voted two to one in favor of older Americans indicating that they are superior in terms of their moral values, respect for others and work ethic. The younger generation got the nod for being more socially tolerant, though the results were not lop-sided. 

The fact that the public perceives older Americans as having a better moral compass than their younger counterparts is no surprise. What is interesting is the one category of ethics where the younger generation shines, social tolerance. It is important because it represents a big change. Generation Y was taught not to see color and as a result they don’t. As our Nation becomes more and more ethnically diverse this quality of Generation Y will pay dividends. 

The work ethic of Generation Y is bound to improve as well as this cohort floods the workplace and faces twenty percent unemployment at entry level. Nothing improves your attitude faster about work than the need to eat. The lop-sided work ethic issue with young adults could easily have been a product of the tiny Generation X because this cohort enjoyed an employees market and full employment at entry level. In fact when Generation X entered the workforce there were ten jobs and eight workers. Nothing breeds a bad work ethic faster than being in demand. That’s all changing in today’s economic and demographic climate.  

It has been forty years since Woodstock and though the perception is that generations in the United States are still divided it is apparent that we have learned how to disagree, to get along. Boomers are not the same parents as their parents no more than Mick Jagger is the same as Benny Goodman. The Boomer’s kids, Generation Y, appear to prefer to make their mark and changes through harmony than through protest or discord. All this bodes well for The United States because we can ostensibly work out our internal differences and concentrate on making the world a better place.       

The 3 Beacon Blog

How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm and Stay Ahead of the Crowd

Book Review by Nicholas Eberstadt

August 10, 2009

Many thanks, Nick for "The Age Curve" book review on Amazon!

Wanna Read Just One Book On The Topic? This Is It,August 9, 2009 By Nicholas Eberstadt (Washington DC) Kenneth Gronbach has done a terrific job of making business sense out of demographics. His focus in this book is the US market--and the sometimes surprising impact that population changes can have on markets, investments and company prospects. Demographic fundamentals may not always be decisive here--but boy, when they do matter, they they can matter big-time! And people who do not get it are left hanging out to dry... "The Age Curve" is a very shrewd book, written in a funny, unassuming style that has the semi-miraculous effect of making demographics interesting to a broad audience. It is a great read for any curious generalist--and it should be required reading in the boardroom for every company merchandising consumer products large or small, especially in these difficult times. (Memo to GM and Chrysler: if you guys understood Gronbach's message, you might not be bankrupt right now..)

Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist and a demographer by training, is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He is also a senior adviser to the National Board of Asian Research, a member of the visiting committee at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty. He is the author of numerous monographs and articles on North and South Korea, East Asia, and countries of the former Soviet Union. His books range fromThe End of North Korea(AEI Press, 1999) toThe Poverty of the Poverty Rate(AEI Press, 2008).

Seriously who do those pesky little girls in green think they are anyway? We live in a free market. They didn’t invent cookies. OK, sure there are certain cookies that bear their signature and are sold on the merits of exclusivity but who’s to say that other retailers can’t capitalize on the market that the Girl Scouts of America established with decades of shoe leather by selling door to door? After all it happens all the time, small organizations establish a market and set the stage for larger more sophisticated corporations to take the process to the next level. So, what’s the big deal about Girl Scout Cookies? Are they a sacred product that is off limits to retail giants? It seems Wal-Mart asked that question internally and the answer was no.

Girl Scout cookies are big business. Nationally they sell over 100 million boxes a year in what amounts to The Girl Scouts most successful fundraiser. Someone at Wal-Mart apparently did the math and recently determined that this could be a profitable category for them. It is not clear where Wal-Mart will manufacture their knock-off cookies but it is certain that China is being considered. We’ll have to watch the ingredients carefully.

Many would consider this move by Wal-Mart to be reckless because of the certain public relations risk attendant in such a decision. Clearly Wal-Mart could make a case for check-mating the Girl Scouts but the reasoning would ring hollow and point up their lack of a moral compass. Wal-Mart is in financial trouble and the more trouble they get into the more desperate they become. Taking on the Girl Scouts is a desperate move made by a desperate retailer. What’s next? Maybe they can find a market for blood and edge out the Red Cross?

Shifting demography is dealing Wal-Mart a bad hand and they have no clue that it is happening. The bulk of their principal customers, The Baby Boomers, have crested fifty-years-old and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics are weaning themselves off the consumption of stuff. The huge generation of Baby Boomers was a perfect customer for Wal-Mart. They knew what they wanted and Wal-Mart sold it for less than anyone. Selection and fashion were not considerations. Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, Generation X born right after the Boomer Generation is too small to consume at the level of the Boomers or satisfy the sales needs of the Wal-Mart retail footprint. Wal-Mart’s only market hope was the huge Generation Y born 1985 to 2004. The problem is young markets demand fashion and selection. Wal-Mart’s retail model of “Cheap and Deep” can not accommodate this market. Small start-up entrepreneurial fast turning retailers will flourish and eat up Wal-Mart’s business like a school of piranhas.

Are all big box retailers in trouble? No. Target, for example seems to have a governing ethos that is compatible with Generation Y. They are cool, caring and have fair prices. Wal-Mart’s indifference to human relations issues at all levels will seal their fate with Generation Y.

Generation Y is rewriting the rules for doing business, especially retail business going forward. Generation Y is “Green” to a fault and “Green” is not limited to environmental issues. “Green” to Generation Y is all about giving back. You can give back to the environment and you can also give back to your fellow man. Smart businesses, especially retail, need to develop a “Green” story and act on it publically with sincerity. Faking a “Green” story is called “green washing” and will be met with distain on the part of Generation Y. A Generation Y boycott would be deadly and certainly not worth the risk.

It was recently announced that PepsiCo intended to investone billion dollars over the next three years in Russia creating bottling plants and setting up production for the Frito Lay snack line. This bold move on the part of PepsiCo was possibly timed to coincide with President Obama’s recent visit to Russia and to help demonstrate a new economic cooperation between the Russia and United States. Also it is important to note that Coca-Cola already has a foothold in Russia having invested almost $2 billion. Politically speaking this move might have its own advantages and even short term financial gains. But I wonder if anyone really thought it through long term. Russia’s Ministry of Finance reports that more than $40 billion dollars of foreign investment was lost in the first quarter of 2009 and that another $70 billion will be lost in the near term. According to President Obama Russia currently makes up only 1% of the United States world trade capacity at $36 billion, comparable to America’s trade with Thailand. Russia is euphemistically called an emerging market, but is it really? Russia’s economic picture is more than a little cloudy, so perhaps Russia’s demographic portrait can clear things up.

Pardon my segue here but I need to make a point about strategic planning

I was in Michigan last week speaking to the members Michigan Credit Union League at their annual conference. This is a state that is very hard hit by the problems precipitated by the big three automakers. It was a big, very well attended, meeting. I expected a very somber group but these people seemed to be made of different stuff. I wouldn’t say that they were ebullient but there was no sign of corporate depression. The conference leaders didn’t ask me to paint a rosy picture of Michigan’s economy; they just wanted me to tell the truth. Most of the people in attendance were senior enough to know that good times and bad times are cyclical so they just wanted to know the long range economic picture and when they could expect a recovery, if at all. I told them that from my thirty-thousand foot demographic perspective, the future was bright. Manufacturing would return to the United States as China’s enormous demographic blunder, the one child only policy began to cripple their workforce. Detroit’s big three would recover. I qualified the fact that my view was long range (about five to seven years) and very big picture and reminded them that it is the long range picture is the only one that really counts.

Considering that most United States corporations are driven by the annual report and many by the quarterly report, the lack of long term vision is ostensible and understandable. The problem is you cannot be a visionary thinking one year into the future nor can you arrive at a viable strategic plan.

Strategic plans should map out your company’s direction three, five, seven and even ten years into the future. Obviously one of the most important considerations in developing a long range plan is determining how many customers you can expect to buy your product going forward. It would follow that most U.S. corporations don’t take this vital consideration into account because they are apparently content projecting the present infinitely into the future.

Back to PepsiCo and the billion dollars of shareholders money they plan to invest in Russia. From demographic perspective Russia is a Forth World country, a crash and burn disaster. The only way it could be worse is if the country went into famine or was being devastated by the plague. Hasn’t anyone noticed that Russia’s population has fallen by 500,000 people per year for years and that the prospects are for more of the same until further notice? Why? Because Russia has catastrophically low fertility and high mortality, they are not having kids and people are dying at very young age. This is a very bad situation that is only getting worse. A sixteen-year-old male in Russia has a fifty-fifty change of living to sixty-years-old. To put this in perspective Russia’s average life expectancy is lower that Pakistan or Bangladesh. Demographically Russia is going backwards. According to world famous demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI, the youth group, 15 to 24 years old, in Russia is slated to decline by half between now and 2025. I wonder if PepsiCo knows about the half part. Do young people consume soft drinks or eat chips?

PepsiCo’s foray into Russia demonstrates a classic lack of vision and planning. Russia’s consumer base and workforce will shrink to unacceptable levels and Russia’s economy will collapse. At that point Russia’s geography, resources and yes, women will be will be very attractive to their unstable southern neighbor China. Should be interesting.

I am active in town government because I believe all politics is local. It doesn’t seem to matter if the decision is made by Congress, President Obama or our town’s local Board of Selectmen; if it affects me it is local. I feel that I have a responsibility to do my part to insure that good decisions are made. I do believe that the good people in power out number the bad and that the system of federal, state and local government that our forefathers put in place, works. Our forefathers knew that there would always be bad people. However, from my perspective one of the biggest enemies to government is bad information. Good decisions made for the wrong reasons quickly become bad decisions.

Far and away the largest part of any local town budget is always education, schools. It often accounts for eighty-percent and more of the allocation of property tax and property tax is the principal source of funding. In our town of Haddam, Connecticut the Board of Finance holds the purse strings but the real power is wielded by the Board of Education because that’s where the money is spent. The Board of Education has tremendous power, but they don’t always have good information.

I recently attended a Board of Education meeting in our beautiful new $40 million dollar middle school (6th, 7th & 8^th grades). The chair of the meeting was reviewing some unexpected savings in the overall budget resulting from the drop in oil prices and the fact that two fewer kindergarten teachers would be needed for the 2009/2010 school year. I asked why we needed fewer kindergarten teachers and the chair explained that kindergarten enrollment had unexpectedly dropped by twenty-five percent under what had been budgeted. I asked him why there was a drop in enrollment and he stated that it might have something to do with the fact that new housing starts in our town had ground to a halt. That might have something to do with it, but it is not the real reason. I knew that this unexpected drop in enrollment would be played out in towns across the United States and that the inverse, unexpected increases in kindergarten enrollment would also catch thousands of towns by surprise. Why? Because the nation’s demography is shifting, really shifting. While I still had the floor I asked if this reduction in enrollment continues, would we need this new school in eight years? The answer was no. But, hey, it was only $40 million dollars.

Good decisions require good information. 2007 was a record year for live births (4,317,000) in the United States according to Census Data released in July 2008. In fact it broke a fifty year record set in 1957 (4,300,000) at the height of the Baby Boom. The United States is currently the only industrialized nation that has fertility above the 2.2 children per couple replacement level. 2007’s live birth numbers hold significant clues to our Nations future demography and our future overall. Twenty-five percent of the 4,317,000 births were Latino. Latinos make up about fourteen percent of our overall population so it is clear to see where our nation’s population growth is coming from. Let me be very clear here. This fact regarding Latino births bodes very well for our country. Without a replacement level fertility countries do not remain strong for very long. Our future is bright, but we have many challenges ahead. Latinos are not yet geographically diverse. The Nation’s Southern and Western states have high concentrations of Latinos while the Mid-West and Northeast states have relatively few. This translates into significantly fewer live births where you have fewer Latinos.

Both of the Latino families that live in Haddam, Connecticut cannot balance out the drop in live births in our region. Our town is going to need to rethink our school budget to allow for fewer students and fewer teachers. On the surface this may sound good because the amount of tax necessary to run things should be less. Below the surface this is a disaster waiting to happen because long term these kids that we didn’t have will translate into a workforce that we can not tap.

Life is complicated. Stay tuned.

The U.S. healthcare industry  has proven to be very vulnerable to the shifting sands of demography. When the massive block of 80 million Baby Boomers born 1945 to 1964 dominated the 20- to 40-year-old segment of the U.S. twenty to sixty year old labor force our current private shared risk, insurance-based healthcare model was very successful. Boomers were paying insurance premiums into the system and not using many of the services.The tiny Silent Generation born 1925 to 1944, occupied the forty to sixty year-old segment of the labor force. The Silents because of their age, used more services than they paid for in premiums but the Boomer Generation more than made up for this deficit. This demographic fact kept insurance premiums low and healthcare service providers profitable. Starting in 1984 The Boomers began to populate the 40- to 60-year-old segment of the labor force and the value of the medical services they used began to exceed what they were paying in premiums. The private shared risk insurance model began to fail. The young healthy generation right behind the Baby Boomers, Generation X, which is about 9 million people smaller than the Boomer Generation, is too small to compensate for the Boomers’ escalating utilization of medical services.

Now Generation Y, the largest generation in American history, born 1985 to 2004, is beginning to enter the workforce at the entry level and all bets are off. In addition millions of Generation Y will begin to start their own businesses because they are facing 20% unemployment at entry level and they have to eat. Couple this with forty-five million assimilating young Latino immigrant populations and the socioeconomically advancing African American cohorts that number over forty million and you have a complex private healthcare insurance marketplace that will surely begin to expand. In short, millions of new very desirable young healthy potential customers will be flooding the private shared risk insurance based model. And all of this will take place without a single piece of legislation or government involvement. Imagine that. Our current private healthcare system here in the United States is not broke, it has just suffered a bit of a set back that will self correct as our demography shifts. 

Pending federal and state legislation poses a significant threat to the viability of the private shared risk insurance model here in the United States. Passage of this legislation can easily lead to unfortunate socialized medicine environments similar to Canada and Great Britain. Our state and federal legislators need to make informed voting decisions based on good demographically based information. This information is simply not in their hands. Maybe someone knows how to make this blog mandatory reading for our senators and congressmen?

Last Updated: May 14, 2009: 11:12 AM ET

In the past eight years, America’s population has grown, become more diverse and aged.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The nation is becoming even more diverse: More than one third of its population belongs to a minority group, and Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday that the minority population reached an estimated 104.6 million - or 34% of the nation's total population - on July 1, 2008, compared to 31% when the Census was taken in 2000. Nearly one in six residents, or 46.9 million people, are Hispanic, the agency reported.

Even more telling for the future: 44% of children under age 18 and 47% of children under the age of five are now from minority families.

The quickly expanding Latino population is having a healthy impact on the economy, according to Ken Gronbach, author of "The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Growing Demographic Trend."

"Latinos have saved our country," he said. "They represent 14% of the population but 25% of the live births. The United States is the only western industrialized nation with a fertility rate above the 2.2% replacement rate."

Growth of other minority groups is also outpacing that of the majority population. Asians, the second-fastest growing group, increased 2.7% year-over-year to 15.5 million. The African-American population rose 1.3% to 41.1 million.

Minority births, combined with high immigration levels, kept the nation's population growing dynamically, spurring the economy by adding to consumer demand.

They will also help to prop up the real-estate market once the economy begins to recover, according to Rakesh Kochhar, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. During the housing boom, minorities closed much of the homeownership gap, although the bust has worked to widen that again.

As it ages, the Baby Boom generation, the largest age cohort in U.S. history, will start to sell their castles as they look to downsize their empty nests. But the group that would be expected to buy those houses, Generation X, has about 9 million fewer members.

"There would be about 10 homes for every eight buyers," said Gronbach. "Xers simply do not have the critical mass to make up for the boomers' footprint."

Minorities will help take up that slack. They are relatively youthful and looking to house their families. The Hispanic population, for example, posted a median age of 27.7 years in 2008. That compared to 36.8 years for the total U.S. population - which is a year-and-a-half older than the median age in 2000.

The number of 65-year-olds and older is nearing 39 million, or 12.8% of the population, up from 12.4% in 2000. The state with the oldest average residents is, not surprisingly, Florida: 17% of the retirement Mecca's population was 65 or older.

Biggest minority

Latinos and other minority workers contribute to keeping the Social Security system solvent, according to Monique Morrissey, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute. The undocumented workers among them often pay more into the Social Security pool than they will take out in benefits.

Morrissey said estimates of deficits in the pool's finances were reduced last year when a Social Security advisory board's technical panel revised some unrealistically low assumptions it had made about Latino immigration.

"They took into account people without papers [paying into Social Security] but not accessing funds from there," she said. "That's bad for workers but very good for Social Security."

State and county populations

The most Latino county in the nation was Los Angeles, with 4.7 million people. Latinos accounted for nearly half the population there and increased 67,000 during the 12 months ended July 1, the most of any county. The Rio Grande border county of Starr, Texas, has the highest proportion of Latino residents: 98%.

California leads all states in the number of Latinos, with a population of 13.5 million, an increase of 313,000 in just one year. New Mexico, appropriately, has the highest percentage of Latinos: 45%.

New York State has the greatest number of African-Americans - 3.5 million - while the District of Columbia and Mississippi have the highest percentages, at 56% and 38% respectively. In terms of counties, Cook County, Ill. (Chicago) leads all others with 1.4 million African Americans, while Claiborne County, Miss., had the highest percentage at 84%.

More than 5 million Asians live in California, more than in any other state; Hawaii has the highest percentage of Asians at 54%. It's the only majority-Asian state in the nation.

Los Angeles County is home to 1.4 million Asians, the most of any county. Honolulu, with 58%, had the highest proportion.

More Pacific Islanders (283,000) and native Americans (739,000) lived in California than any other state.

My Reply: 

I was interviewed by CNN's Les Christie for the above article. Once the story hit I began to get hate mail. It is very clear to me that many people do not understand the dynamics of shifting demography and the importance of understanding it. Between 1965 and 1984 the number of babies born in the United States dropped like a stone owing to a misguided belief that "Zero Population Growth" was beneficial. Roe vs. Wade (1973) also played a significant part and our fertility plummeted twenty-five percent after the Supreme Court decision. In 1985 we began to have children again at above replacement level fertility, but the damage was done.

We have a deficit in our population that is twenty years long. It's called Generation X. Generation X has nine million fewer people than the Boomer Generation born 1945 to 1964. This means that Generation X can not earn, consume, pay taxes or populate the labor force at the level of the baby Boomers because they simply do not have the critical mass.

When Generation X entered the entry level labor market twenty years ago they could not satisfy the demand. This sent labor costs soaring and jobs off shore. Latino's poured into the country to fill the demand unmet by Generation X. Now the bad economy and our own homegrown labor force, Generation Y, born 1985 to 2004 is forcing millions of Latinos to return to their home countries. The remaining Latinos have conveniently filled in the deficit in our population between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four years old.

As Generation X, now fortified by the remaining Latino immigrants, ages into the stage of life when they will be required to do the heavy lifting in the United states by paying most of the federal, state and local taxes, it is paramount that the Latinos immigrants assimilate as quickly as possible. Most of this assimilation will occur naturally because their culture is very compatible with U.S. culture and they assimilate faster than any other immigrants in the Nation's history. Without the Latino immigrants our economy would crash in ten years making the current economic crisis look like a cake walk.