Trying a new way of looking at this. I’ve made 15-year cohorts to align with conventionally-named generations (usually of 15-year spans) and then took a sampling of populations at 15-year intervals to illustrate each generation’s passage through career-life events associated with Social Security.
US Census Data (actual, estimated, projected) has been organized in 15-year cohorts to align with commonly-known Generations (e/g “Boomers”). The column years are also at 15-year intervals to align with the last year of each named generation, thereby illustrating how each generation ages through career and retirement. The bubbles are sized relative to the population of each cohort (y) in the given year (x).
Data cleaned and organized in Excel, aggregated in R, output to an SVG device, and then refined in Adobe Illustrator.
Putting this on a 45° angle makes people think that they need to read the data in a different way. If anything, leaving it vertical would show the generation dropping in the decade, which would make it make more intuitive sense.
This isn’t well done imo.
Social Security, as it was designed, is a self supporting investment program. This worked until people were capped out on donations, and significant money was removed from its coffers. It was not intended as a system where newer people in the system supported older people.
Contributions to social security have not covered payments for several years, and projections suggest they never will.
How does genx go from51m youth to 61m mid career?
How did cohorts from 0-14 contribute to social security? They don’t work or pay into the program until they have a job and generate income?
Still as confusing as the first one. Is it saying GenX contributed $51.3M from 1980-1996? Or just in 1980 as 0-14 year olds working that year? I can’t really figure out what the plot is saying.
Being considered mid career is kinda sobering as a millennial… lol
No idea what’s going on here. Way too complicated.
If this was in a lecture, where you could walk people through it, it could be fine. But as a standalone graphic, it’s no good.
It’s very colorful, though!
It’s interesting information, but I had to look at it for a few minutes to figure out what exactly was going on.
What happened to Gen Beta?
This makes social security sound an awful lot like a ponzi scheme. Wouldn’t it be better if you made it sound less like one?
An I misreading this or does this chart expect more Gen-Z to be around in 2041 than there is in 2025?
Is that all supposed to be through immigration?
I think if I wanted to make this worse to read I’d have to… make it on fire I guess.
Really don’t understand why the boomers get a longer duration than the other cohorts. Like, why not make them all run 18 years? I still remember growing up the 80s when Gen X ran thru 1982 to match Boomers.
I know it’s just marketing to create tension and constructs like xennials, and etc… But why social scientists?? Particularly in a calculation like this based on birth year cohorts? Why not have some consistency in the groups? Why not make all the cohorts the same number of years? Or split the cohorts so the number of people are the same but the years may differ.
This serves almost zero statistically useful purpose to illustrate how one age group funds others… except to reinforce advertising/marketing tools.
How do you end up with more millenials after 2012? Is immigration outpacing deaths that much?
HEY! When did the committee vote to skip over “Gen Beta”?
Honestly too difficult to understand what I’m looking at…
You should include the ratio of retired to working population. Those numbers are what show why the system as designed before 1980 isn’t sustainable with the current population pyramid
![[OC] The Generational Support Designed into Social Security](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/9k6sxrlko5je1-1800x1024.png)
19 comments
Trying a new way of looking at this. I’ve made 15-year cohorts to align with conventionally-named generations (usually of 15-year spans) and then took a sampling of populations at 15-year intervals to illustrate each generation’s passage through career-life events associated with Social Security.
US Census Data (actual, estimated, projected) has been organized in 15-year cohorts to align with commonly-known Generations (e/g “Boomers”). The column years are also at 15-year intervals to align with the last year of each named generation, thereby illustrating how each generation ages through career and retirement. The bubbles are sized relative to the population of each cohort (y) in the given year (x).
Data cleaned and organized in Excel, aggregated in R, output to an SVG device, and then refined in Adobe Illustrator.
Source
[https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/](https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/)
Projections (2026-2057)
[https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/popproj/2023-summary-tables.html](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2023/demo/popproj/2023-summary-tables.html)
Reference (for further study of similar demographics):
[https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/](https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/)
Putting this on a 45° angle makes people think that they need to read the data in a different way. If anything, leaving it vertical would show the generation dropping in the decade, which would make it make more intuitive sense.
This isn’t well done imo.
Social Security, as it was designed, is a self supporting investment program. This worked until people were capped out on donations, and significant money was removed from its coffers. It was not intended as a system where newer people in the system supported older people.
Contributions to social security have not covered payments for several years, and projections suggest they never will.
How does genx go from51m youth to 61m mid career?
How did cohorts from 0-14 contribute to social security? They don’t work or pay into the program until they have a job and generate income?
Still as confusing as the first one. Is it saying GenX contributed $51.3M from 1980-1996? Or just in 1980 as 0-14 year olds working that year? I can’t really figure out what the plot is saying.
Being considered mid career is kinda sobering as a millennial… lol
No idea what’s going on here. Way too complicated.
If this was in a lecture, where you could walk people through it, it could be fine. But as a standalone graphic, it’s no good.
It’s very colorful, though!
It’s interesting information, but I had to look at it for a few minutes to figure out what exactly was going on.
What happened to Gen Beta?
This makes social security sound an awful lot like a ponzi scheme. Wouldn’t it be better if you made it sound less like one?
An I misreading this or does this chart expect more Gen-Z to be around in 2041 than there is in 2025?
Is that all supposed to be through immigration?
I think if I wanted to make this worse to read I’d have to… make it on fire I guess.
Really don’t understand why the boomers get a longer duration than the other cohorts. Like, why not make them all run 18 years? I still remember growing up the 80s when Gen X ran thru 1982 to match Boomers.
I know it’s just marketing to create tension and constructs like xennials, and etc… But why social scientists?? Particularly in a calculation like this based on birth year cohorts? Why not have some consistency in the groups? Why not make all the cohorts the same number of years? Or split the cohorts so the number of people are the same but the years may differ.
This serves almost zero statistically useful purpose to illustrate how one age group funds others… except to reinforce advertising/marketing tools.
How do you end up with more millenials after 2012? Is immigration outpacing deaths that much?
HEY! When did the committee vote to skip over “Gen Beta”?
Honestly too difficult to understand what I’m looking at…
You should include the ratio of retired to working population. Those numbers are what show why the system as designed before 1980 isn’t sustainable with the current population pyramid
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