Baby Boomers and Young Adults

To a great extent, the market for consumer financial services is divided between Baby Boomers and Post-Boomer Young Adults. The Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964 and at the end of 2000 were aged 36 to 54. Currently, there are about 78 million Boomers. Post-Boomer Young Adults were born between 1966 and 1980 and are presently aged 20 to 34. If you were to target either of these two groups for your financial services, you would want to know their basic characteristics and where they live. As we shall see, Boomers and Young Adults are quite different and generally congregate in different cities.

In his excellent article in American Demographics, William H. Frey characterizes the Boomers as at the point where many have started their families and even their own businesses. And, many "are amassing serious disposable income." Boomers are in the "nesting stage of their lives." Often as a result, they are not moving to cities that are now popular for the Young Adults. In contrast, they are often returning to "more mature" regions of the country such as the upper Midwest and New England.

Where would you target your marketing efforts to reach the Boomers? The five metropolitan areas with the largest concentrations of Boomers and their share of the population are as follows:

In contrast, Young Adults gravitate towards the Sun Belt, where the action is and housing is less costly than in the areas inhabited by Boomers. They are in the "high migration" years, and they frequently join new immigrants in the regions and cities that they select. Their top cities and their share of the population are listed below: