Leadership Index
A generation’s Leadership Index is a measure of its lifetime tenure in power. It is the sum of all of its leadership shares across all years, divided by its number of birthyears. For birthyear definitions of the generations, see the accompanying Generations Key.
Since this value for all cohorts averages to 100, we can say that a generation’s index shows its greater or lesser political influence in relation to overall leadership irrespective of generation. For example, the Gilded Generation’s value of 115 shows that its cohorts, on average, occupied political office for 15 percent longer than the average for all cohorts of all generations.
| Generation | Index Category | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership | House | Senate | Governors | |
| Awakening | 14 | 0 | 1 | 21 |
| Liberty | 65 | 15 | 21 | 78 |
| Republican | 96 | 79 | 85 | 90 |
| Compromise | 101 | 99 | 110 | 96 |
| Transcendental | 108 | 109 | 110 | 106 |
| Gilded | 115 | 114 | 126 | 106 |
| Progressive | 99 | 103 | 94 | 99 |
| Missionary | 112 | 115 | 110 | 111 |
| Lost | 94 | 96 | 96 | 91 |
| G.I. | 95 | 95 | 92 | 99 |
| Silent | 104 | 100 | 103 | 109 |
| Boom | 53 | 64 | 37 | 57 |
| Generation X | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
The Leadership Index is further broken down into indexes for the House, Senate and Governors. For the Awakening, Liberty, and Republican generations, the Senate Index include shares of office in the Continental Congress.
For the Awakening, Liberty, and Republican generations, data is incomplete because we do not have shares of leadership preceding 1775. For the G.I., Silent, and Boom generations, as well as for Generation X, the data is incomplete because those generations’ lifetime tenures in power are not yet finished.
