Monday, July 28, 2008

A New Baby Boom Churning?

It was on ABC World News last Wednesday night.

In 2007, a record number of babies were born in the USA that some demographers say could signal an impending baby “boomlet.”

Interesting.

Back in January, an AP release came out from the CDC in Atlanta titled “Against the Trend, US Births Way Up.”

4.290 million babies were born in the US in 2006. 4.315 million babies were born in the US in 2007.

Wow.

The story on ABC World News featured film clips of Anglo and African-American Gen X families riding in SUVs through subdivision America. They also interviewed a nice middle-class Anglo couple that just gave birth to a little girl the night before.

In the AP CDC release, the 2006 level was cited as the highest since 1961…the tail-end of the Baby Boom surge. In the ABC World News report, the 2007 level was cited as the highest since 1957, one of the peak years of Baby Boom deliveries.

So…is the Gen X couple that clings to their cocoon and feels overlooked by many really producing this many babies?

We noted in a Blog this past fall that a Newsweek article reported that Gen X couples are the least sexually active generation when compared to Millenniums, Boomers and Matures. Maybe Gen X couples really only have sex to pro-create and they use their self-taught tech mindsets to chart out just when the field is most fertile and productive.

The in-town Atlanta development where I live has become over-run with Gen X couples in the last several years. After the ABC newscast, I took my puppy for a walk through the neighborhood. Sure enough…I noticed that a number of the GenXers had more than one stroller on their front porch.

Then I thought, maybe it’s the result of the economy. The original Baby Boom was fostered by the troops returning home from WWII. Maybe the GenXers getting laid-off in the last several years have decided to procreate to occupy their time spent being contained in the home.

Here are a couple observations from our perspective.

Nowhere in the ABC World News story did the newscaster mention that the birth rate among Anglos remains stable and the birth rate among African-Americans has actually declined.

USA Today also ran an article about the high US birth rate. It quoted “federal demographer” Stephanie Ventura who said: “I can’t tell you anything about who’s having these babies, but it is an early look and there is an increase.”

Stephanie, are you related to the governor of Minnesota?

Here are some facts that your comrades at the US Census Bureau have released. Maybe you should go have lunch with them.

According to the US Census Bureau, the average size of an Anglo US household in 2007 was 2.4 individuals. The average size of an African-American US household in 2007 was 2.7 individuals.

Now Hispanics are a different story!

The average size of a Hispanic US household in 2007 was 3.6 individuals and 62% of all Hispanic households have a child less than 18 years old still at home.

Also according the US Census Bureau, 24.7 years old is the median age of US Hispanics compared to 36.4 years old for the US population as a whole.

Family bonding and family building are icons of Hispanic culture.

In fact, the CDC noted in its article that Hispanics as a group in the US have fertility rates 40% higher than the US overall.

Hispanics represent the largest minority group in the US.

Generation ZOOM is jelling right now as we speak.

Generation ZOOM is made up of the kids born after 2000 and right now are age 0-8. There are 40 million of them out there coast-to-coast in the US this year.

The generational span is projected to end in 2012 and is expected to exceed the 52 million GenXers in terms of their population count.

Make no mistake about it… Hispanics are driving a significant share of the growth and while this generation is not likely to exceed the size of the Boomers or Millenniums, they will exceed every generation they follow in terms of their impact on our society, marketplace, technology and politics.

And Hispanics are going to play a significant role in the generational impact!

There are 78 million Baby Boomers and 71 million Millenniums.

There are only 52 million GenXers who are now age 32 – 43 years of age.

Many of the press editors are in their 30s and early 40s. This is true across the broadcast as well as print media. Yes…most of the news announcers are Boomers…even Katie Couric was born right in the midst of that 1957 baby making surge!... but the guys and gals that are writing the stories and deciding what gets broadcast and printed are mostly GenXers.

The 2007 Yankelovich Monitors reports that many GenXers believe that both business and government are passing them by and moving alignment with the Boomers directly to alignment with the Millenniums.

Last week I wrote about the message being the medium and the medium being the message. These GenXers seemed hooked on labeling the kids they are birthing as the “next Baby Boom.”

Hey GenXers…don’t look behind you, but the Millennium Boom is emerging as the hot marketing target NOW!

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