Arikah Map

Demographics

Demographics is a shorthand term for 'population characteristics'. Demographics include race, age, income, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households, are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics are primarily used in economic and marketing research.


Contents

Demographics vs Demography

The term demographics as a noun is often used erroneously in place of demography, the study of human population and its structure and change. Although there is no absolute delineation, ('demographic' as an adjective can indeed refer to either (e.g., demographic transition), demography focuses on population dynamics, whereas demographics is most often used in the fields of media studies, advertising, marketing, and polling, and should not be used interchangeably with the term "demography" or (more broadly) "population studies."

Demographic variables

Marketers and other social scientists often group populations into categories based on demographic variables. The most frequently used demographic variables are:

Many demographic trends are quite easy to determine. This is due to the predictability of many demographic relationships. If, for example, the birth rate increases during certain years (as indeed happened during the baby boom years), we can determine that there will be an increase in the demand for baby food and diapers. In several years there will be an increase in the demand for toys and children's clothes; after a decade an increased demand for public education, video games and music CDs; after two decades an increased demand for university services, compact automobiles, rental apartments, wedding photographers, and furniture; after four decades an increase in the demand for houses, sedan cars, insurance, weight-loss centres, and investment services; after six decades an increased demand for health-care services and undertakers.

Demographic trends have been used to explain everything from the demand for vacation properties, to the tennis craze of the 1970s, to election and stock market results. Of course no social phenomenon is so simple as to be explicable with demographics alone, but it is a good start. This is the meaning of Professor D. Foot's (1996) often quoted claim that "demographics explains about two-thirds of everything"[1].

Dr. Dychtwald (1989) describes the "aging of America" and argues that the changing age distribution of the American population is "the most important trend in our time". He considers the consequences of demographic facts like: the over 50 age group owns 77% of all financial assets in America, accounts for more than 50% of all new car sales (by value), spends more on travel and recreation than any other age group, etc. He asks what will happen to health care systems and social security entitlements (pension benefits) when the greying of America places additional demands on the system while simultaneously reducing the number of contributors into the system.[2]

Sterling and Waite (1998) describe this aging trend in terms of "generational warfare". They ask what will happen to the value of the real estate and financial assets when the aging baby boomers all try to sell them. How will the younger age cohort react to this?[3]

Other recent demographic trends include the rise of the two income family, the single parent family, and the nuclear family.

Demographic profiles in marketing

Marketers typically combine several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile (often shortened to "a demographic") provides enough information about the typical member of this group to create a mental picture of this hypothetical aggregate. For example, a marketer might speak of the single, female, middle-class, age 18 to 24 demographic.

Marketing researchers typically have two objectives in this regard: first to determine what segments or subgroups exist in the overall population; and secondly to create a clear and complete picture of the characteristics of a typical member of each of these segments. Once these profiles are constructed, they can be used to develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan.

Generational cohorts

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view.
Please improve the article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

A generational cohort has been defined as "the aggregation of individuals (within some population definition) who experience the same event within the same time interval"[4]. The notion of a group of people bound together by the sharing of the experience of common historical events due to their birth in a particular period of time was first introduced by Karl Mannheim in the early 1920s. Today the concept has found its way into popular culture through well known epitomes like "baby boomer" and "gen-Xer".

An interesting study by Strauss and Howe (The fourth turning) looked at generational similarities and differences going back to the 15th century and concluded that over 80 year spans, generations proceed through 4 stages of about 20 years each. The first phase consists of times of relative crisis and the people born during this period were called "artists". The next phase was a "high" period and those born in this period were called "prophets". The next phase was an "awakening period" and people born in this period were called "nomads". The final stage was the "unraveling period" and people born in this period were called "heroes". The most recent "high period" occurred in the 50s and 60s (hence baby boomers are the most recent crop of "prophets").

The most definitive recent study of US generational cohorts was done by Schuman and Scott (1989) in 1985 in which a broad sample of adults of all ages were asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?"[5]. They found that 33 events were mentioned with great frequency. When the ages of the respondents were correlated with the expressed importance rankings, seven distinct cohorts became evident. Today we use the following descriptors for these cohorts:

US Demographic birth cohorts

Main article: Demographics of the United States

The US Census Bureau considers the following demographic birth cohorts based on birth rate, which is statistically measurable:

Subdivided groups are present when peak boom years or inverted peak bust years are present, and may be represented by a normal or inverted bell-shaped curve (rather than a straight curve). The boom subdivided cohorts may be considered as "pre-peak" (including peak year) and "post-peak". The year 1957 was the baby boom peak with 4.3 million births and 122.7 fertility rate. Although post-peak births (such as trailing edge boomers) are in decline, and sometimes referred to as a "bust", there are still a relative large number of births. The dearth-in-birth bust cohorts include those up to the valley birth year, and those including and beyond, leading up to the subsequent normal birth rate.

Criticisms and qualifications of demographic profiling

Demographic profiling is essentially an exercise in making generalizations about groups of people. As with all such generalizations many individuals within these groups will not conform to the profile - demographic information is aggregate and probabilistic information about groups, not about specific individuals. Critics of demographic profiling argue that such broad-brush generalizations can only offer such limited insight that their practical usefulness is debatable.

Most demographic information is also culturally specific. The generational cohort information above, for example, applies primarily to North America (and to a lesser extent to Western Europe) and it may be unfruitful to generalise conclusions more widely.

See also


References

  1. ^ Foot, D. (1996), Boom, Bust and Echo: How to profit from the coming demographic shift, MacFarlane Walter & Rose, Toronto, 1996, ISBN 0-921912-97-8
  2. ^ Dychtwald, K. (1989), Age Wave: The challenges and opportunities of an aging North America, St. Martins Press, New York, 1989, ISBN 0-87477-441-1
  3. ^ Sterling, W. & White, S. (1998), Boomernomics: The future of your money in the upcoming generational warfare, The Library of Contemporary Thought (Ballantine Publishing), New York, 1998, ISBN 0-345-42583-9
  4. ^ Ryder, N., The cohort as a concept in the study of social change, presented at the 1959 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
  5. ^ Schuman, H. and Scott, J. (1989), Generations and collective memories, American Psychological Review, vol. 54, 1989, pp. 359-81.

Categories


Limited geographic scope | Demographics | Demography | Consumer behaviour | Marketing | Marketing research | Demographic economics

Find

Find

Find