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The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change

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Cohort Analysis in Social Research

Abstract

Society persists despite the mortality of its individual members, through processes of demographic metabolism and particularly the annual infusion of birth cohorts. These may pose a threat to stability but they also provide the opportunity for societal transformation. Each birth cohort acquires coherence and continuity from the distinctive development of its constituents and from its own persistent macroanalytic features. Successive cohorts are differentiated by the changing content of formal education, by peer-group socialization, and by idiosyncratic historical experience. Young adults are prominent in war, revolution, immigration, urbanization and technological change. Since cohorts are used to achieve structural transformation and since they manifest its consequences in characteristic ways, it is proposed that research be designed to capitalize on the congruence of social change and cohort identification.

Revision of a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, August, 1959. Reprinted from American Sociological Review, 30, (1965), 843–861.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office of Population Research, Princeton University, USA

    Norman B. Ryder

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  1. Norman B. Ryder
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, 48104, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    William M. Mason

  2. Department of Statistics, Carnegie-Mellon University, 15213, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Stephen E. Fienberg

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© 1985 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Ryder, N.B. (1985). The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change. In: Mason, W.M., Fienberg, S.E. (eds) Cohort Analysis in Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8536-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8536-3_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-8538-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-8536-3

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