Pew response and attempted clarification

46% of people both "correctly" identified their generation title, and said the term describes them "well."

Now in the Washington Post: The generation labels mean nothing. It’s time to retire them

The Washington Post has published my Opinion piece on generation labels, "The generation labels mean nothing. It's time we retired them." They even commissioned art, which moves! by Tara Jacoby, for The Washington Post This follows the series of posts on this blog, going back a few years, you can read under the generations tag.…

Why you’ll never establish the existence of distinct “generations” in American society

We're not going to find a set of fixed divisions that works across arenas -- such as social attitudes, family behavior, and economic status.

A little ‘generation’ debunking data exercise

One example of the pitfalls of Pew's "generations," using environmental attitudes.

Draft: Open letter to the Pew Research Center on generation labels

Maybe if we got a lot of signatories to this, or something like it, they would take heed. Suggestions welcome.

Santa’s magic, children’s wisdom, and inequality (a timeless holiday classic essay!)

Santa is harmless fun and existential comfort-food. So, consider this an attempted joyicide.

Against the generations, with video

No one's assessing whether these categories are doing us any good, but everyone's getting a lot of clicks.

Intermarriage rates relative to diversity

How do the states' intermarriage rates compare to their level of diversity?

Now-you-know data graphic series

Looking for easily-told data short stories.

Fertility trends and the myth of Millennials

The other day I showed trends in employment and marriage rates, and made the argument that the generational term "Millennial" and others are not useful: they are imposed before analyzing data and then trends are shoe-horned into the categories. When you look closely you see that the delineation of "generations" is arbitrary and usually wrong.…