Neil Howe is a historian, economist and demographer who writes and speaks frequently on generations, the economy and social change. He is America’s leading thinker on who today’s generations are, what motivates them and how they will shape the nation’s future.
He has authored nine books on American generations, many co-authored with William Strauss, including Generations (1991), The Fourth Turning (1997), Millennials Rising (2000) and, most recently, Millennials in the Workplace (2010). In relation to The Fourth Turning, the Boston Globe wrote “If Howe and Strauss are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets.” He has also authored numerous books and policy reports on demographics, most recently The Graying of the Great Powers (2008).
He is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he helps lead the Global Aging Initiative. He holds graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale University.
Erico Tavares: Neil, we are delighted to be speaking with you today. Your work has influenced many people over the years, including us. We read the “Fourth Turning” many years ago, and had almost forgotten about it. Then 2008 happened and we felt that this time was indeed different. Upon re-reading your book we were stunned by many of the things you had predicted over a decade ago. For the people less familiar with your work, could you briefly describe what a Fourth Turning is, which as we understand it results from a specific generational sequence that you have identified?
Neil Howe: A turning, as you define it, is a unit of history which is roughly the length of a social generation, about 20-23 years long. We identified these units looking deeply at the history of America and of other countries around the world, and originally discovered this idea of turnings by analyzing the generational history over many centuries. What we noticed is that not only social generations are very different, they also tend to arrive in a certain pattern, a certain order. Certain types of generations always follow other types. And this in turn is connected to a certain order and rhythm in history itself.
For example, America’s great crises – certainly our greatest total wars – have arrived in our history roughly at intervals of a long lifetime, including the War of the Spanish Succession, the American Revolution, the Civil War all the way to the Great Depression and World War II. That’s kind of the sequence.
These are the great Fourth Turnings of American history. And we call them so because of where they are in a cycle of different mood shifts that we observe. The Second Turnings by contrast happen almost in between these crises, and that’s when you get the great awakenings in American history. These are the great cultural upheavals.
So in a Fourth Turning we remake the outer world: the economy, politics, empire, technology, infrastructure… In Second Turnings we remake the inner world: religion, values, art… This basic yin and yang of looking at a multiplicity of social trends is something you don’t notice unless you are looking at all of it. And once you do, you can see how these intergenerational patterns move to the same beat.
I should also add that within this cycle there is an interaction between how different generations are shaped in childhood, coming of age when they are young. They then become parents and leaders as they reach mid-life and then go on to shape history, which in turns shapes the youth of a younger generation. You can see how that works. It’s a fully integrated and complete cycle.
And it's one of the few cycles – whether you are talking about war, realigning elections, cycles in family life or the long cycle in the economy – whose periodicity is strictly determined by the phases of life of a human being. One of the problems that long cycle theorists have had, be it 60-year or 100-year cycles or whatever, is that they often wonder what governs these cycles. Why isn’t it 2 years or 5 years?
So our research shows a connection with the biology of human life.