Peter Francese is a demographic trends analyst at Oglive & Mather. He sees four major, emergent trends that will come into even sharper focus with next year's census. What America will look like in 2010.
1. The Grandparent Society. Grandparents will number almost 70 million in 2010 and are growing 5x faster than the population as a whole.
This, Francese says, is the most fascinating development in recent memory, the morphing of America into a multi-generational society in which grandparents, their adult children, and their children’s children are all living in the same house, with the grandparents offering both economic and emotional support.
This coincides with a staggering increase in births to single mothers; today, one in four children is born to an unmarried woman. And, as Francese puts it, “Who needs the help of grandparents more than a single mom?” The upshot, he says, is that Americans 50 years and older control the vast majority of assets and show the most economic growth; he thinks advertising dollars should shift from the current 10% spent on that demographic to 40%.
2. The "rocketing ascendancy of women in America"
3. The growing Hispanic population, up 42% as America becomes ever more multicultural.
4. The migration pattern to the South and West.
The Midwest and Northeast are hemorrhaging jobs and residents, while the South and the West have seen a huge uptick in residents (and, California aside, are doing better economically).