Nobody saw them coming, this explosion of people known as Baby Boomers. Seventy-eight million strong, they were beyond imagination. The biggest generation in American history took America by surprise.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, birth rates were dropping and population growth was slowing. During the 1930s, government demographers worried aloud that the U.S. population would plateau around 148 million and maybe even decline by century’s end, a prospect that was doubly alarming in the context of the political and economic turmoil darkening the globe during that time.

Demand is the fundamental, necessary platform for growth and innovation, so extrapolation of these declining population trends into the future ...

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