4 ms·
A couple things: 1. Age distribution is not uniform: the histogram of people's ages really is multimodal (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-sampling
by realbarack 8y ago
A couple things:
1. Age distribution is not uniform: the histogram of people's ages really is multimodal (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/06/americas-age-profile-told-through-population-pyramids.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2016/...) so talking about generations is a way to think about the "clusters" of ages.
2. Intuitively there is a certain zeitgeist that comes from being around for certain events or being affected by certain societal or economic forces. What did it mean to be a teenager or a college student in 1968? Do Americans who recall September 11, 2001 versus those too young to remember it think differently about things? How did the recession of 2007 affect those who were starting off their careers versus those who were about to retire? Generations are an attempt to generalize the answers to these questions.
- icebraining 8y ago9/11 is an interesting example; the youngest Millennials (born '81-'96, according to Pew and others) were only five at the time, so do their experiences really match the teenagers and young adults at the time, who had enough context to understand what they were watching? In my experience, that's not true at all, to them it was merely an historical event, whereas I quite distinctively remember the shock, despite not even being an American.
- mywittyname 8y agoBut people of the same age also have very different experiences for the same event. A 15 year old in NYC would remember 9/11 way differently than one from Colorado.