the population hourglass

Here's an excellent article from FastCompany about population demographics. A must read for any business or marketing planner. The piece speaks about the population pyramid - a visual representation of how your society's population stacks up.

Imagine stacking up the entire population, with infants at the bottom, and seniors at the top. Typical past populations look like pyramids. Lots of yoots at the bottom, and a handful of old people at the top. But we're in for a big change. Our population now looks like an hourglass.

An excerpt from the article:
Starting in the next decade, however, our flabby pyramid is quickly going to slim down. It will assume the form of an hourglass, with the largest number of older people in our society's history, the quasi-retired baby boomers, up top, and the largest generation of young people since the boomers--the millennials, or echo boomers--at the bottom. The beleaguered generation-Xers will form the "pinched waist" in the middle.