The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm

The Silent Generation

Only 52.5 million live births were recorded between 1925 and 1944. The members of this generation—the “Silents”—are currently sixty-four to eighty-three years old. Immigration numbers were actually negative during some of these years (that is, more people left than came in); the total number of immigrants coming to the United States during this period was a paltry 2.4 million because it was a bad idea to come here during the Great Depression. After all, it was just as easy to starve in Europe, and World War II made immigration impossible.

The Silent Generation is the smallest generation of the last century, and it lived in the shadow of the GI Generation. The Silents would hear the war stories, but they couldn’t tell any. ...