The Demographic Environment

Please complete this form and submit it by November 7, 1999.

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Your Name

Age

The post-WW2 Baby Boom is the most significant demographic feature by its sheer size: 75 million, or over 1/3 of the U.S. population. This bulge in age distribution leads growth strategies in industries serving age-specific markets. As boomers age -- and live longer -- marketers must follow.

How old are the wired? Are they older or younger than the population as a whole?

Gender

The general population is half female and half male. Computers, however, have always been toys for boys. Look at the jargon: abort operation, kill file, execute code. They've done a great job making the tools powerful and fast. Now that non-computer science majors are using the tools, are women catching up?

What is the gender distribution of the wired? What are the five-year trends?

Family Structure

The Leave-It-to-Beaver Good Ol' Days are over. In fact, they lasted for only thirty minutes once a week in the '50s, anyway. The U.S. has roughly 100 million households. Key trends:

increasing age of those marrying
delayed child-bearing
remarriages
more two-income families
more non-family households

How many are wired? Using the list above, how do they compare to non-wired households?

Geography

Americans are mobile. Key trends:

more frequent moves
Rustbelt to Sunbelt
rural to urban
urban to suburban

Where do the wired live?

Education

Americans are becoming more educated and jobs more white-collar. Almost everyone graduates from high school and almost all of them go on to more education. However, about a quarter of adult Americans have a bachelor's degree. The mean age of a college student is 26. The economy is changing from a production orientation to a service orientation. Instead of being the world's muscle, we're becoming the world's brain. Lifelong learning is the new buzzword.

How much formal education do the wired have?

Ethnic Diversity

Of the 270 million Americans, 74% are white, 12% black, with the remaining 14% mostly Hispanic (22 million) and Asian (7 million). The Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups are the fastest-growing.

What is the racial distribution of the wired?

Overall

Based on the demographics you have found here, use your own words to describe and characterize the wired. Does your characterization suggest anything about the wired that you can predict even though it's not among these statistics? Can you find a source to validate that prediction?

Gems

I won't be surprised if you find interesting information that doesn't fit into this form anywhere. Please put it into the text area below.