Generations of American Leaders: Leadership Power Indices

Leadership Power Indices

A generation’s power index is a measure of its lifetime tenure in office. It is the sum of all of its leadership shares across all years, divided by its number of birth years. Starting with the Compromise Generation, the “national” leadership share is the unweighted average of the shares in these three bodies.

Since this value for all cohorts averages to 100, we can say that a generation’s index measures the political power of its cohorts relative to all cohorts of all generations. For example, the Gilded Generation’s value of 120.9 shows that its cohorts, on average, occupied political office for 20.9 percent more aggregate years than the average for all cohorts of all generations.

Power Index Relative Measure of Lifetime Power by Generation and Position
Generation		Power Index
Name	Birth Years	Rep.	Sen.	Gov.	Nat’l
For the Awakening, Liberty, and Republican Generations, the Nat’l share includes service in the Continental Congress between 1775 and 1787. This generation’s power index is still rising, since it still has members in office.
Awakening¹	1701–1723	0.1	0.5	2.0	14.4
Liberty¹	1724–1741	15.9	22.4	35.2	64.2
Republican¹	1742–1766	82.2	88.6	88.5	97.8
Compromise	1767–1791	102.7	114.4	99.2	104.4
Transcendental	1792–1821	112.9	113.7	109.2	113.1
Gilded	1822–1842	119.7	132.2	112.1	120.9
Progressive	1843–1859	109.2	99.4	104.8	106.8
Missionary	1860–1882	120.6	114.5	117.1	119.2
Lost	1883–1900	101.2	102.1	94.6	100.8
GI²	1901–1924	99.1	97.1	103.2	99.0
Silent²	1925–1942	115.3	129.2	119.6	118.0
Boom²	1943–1960	123.1	100.5	135.2	120.2
Generation X²	1961–1981	36.0	20.1	23.9	32.2
Millennial²	1982–2003	2.4	0.4	0.2	1.8