Our changing demographics

摘要

I have been promising (or threatening, depending on your point of view) for some rime to write on the subject of SEG's demographics and now is the time. One could say that it is SEG's most important issue because our demographic profile says a lot about our society and deeply influences our future. Yet, I have been slow to bring the issue to the fore because I have been puzzled by some aspects of our demographics and also needed to collect some hard data. I think you may find the results interesting. Figure 1 says it all as far as the demographic problem we have perceived for some time—almost. You see our membership in 1990 classified by age in five-year increments and displayed as a percentage of our total membership. The overweighting of the 30- to 40-year age range is obvious. This disparity is disturbing on its own, but becomes more so when compared with data from 10 years later shown in Figure 2.