Bernard Salt abandons his Baby Boomer theory

That comment "He does not do any labour force projections." – surely one of the first things a real demographer would do – is crucial. If Salt had attempted a proper demographic calculation, defining his assumptions, he would surely have noticed the error.

And of course real demographers don't just get their sums right. They also stay in touch with their peers, and notice if others are getting results very different from their own.

For instance Salt, in his June 2 piece in the Australian, claims as a supporter the pro-growth demographer Professor Peter McDonald. It's true that McDonald's first degree was in Economic Statistics, and he remains a passionate believer in economic growth and population growth. Yet McDonald publicly stated as recently as 13 May 2011 that Australia's labour force is still growing (without immigration) by something under 100,000 a year. If Salt were more aware of the demographic community, then he would know of McDonald's calculations, and be aware that they contradict his own.

Now to the second question!

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What forced Salt to admit that "Gen Y" is bigger not smaller than the baby boomers?

Academic demographers don't commonly comment on what a populist like Salt writes, so he had long flown under their radar and received little criticism – despite much adulation from some business groups and the Australian newspaper.

However, my web-article on May 26. "Baby boomers retiring. Is there really a crisis?" put on record a detailed refutation of his "Big Tilt" theory.

To add to his troubles, the book, Dick Smith's Population Crisis, appeared in the same week as Salt's The Big Tilt. Salt found himself head to head with Dick Smith in two major ABC interviews. Dick Smith pursued him on both issues: not being a demographer, and mistaking the baby boom for a bulge in generation size rather than a bulge in the fertility rate. Salt gave ground considerably, and then published in the Australian on June 2 his admission that Gen X and Gen Y are larger than the boomers. Clearly there will not be any sudden decline in labour-force due to Gen Y being too small to replace the boomers!

At this point I would draw the curtain of charity -- except that Salt did not apologise, or even mention that he had previously claimed the reverse. Instead he stridently titled his article Let Dick have his say, but case for growth is overwhelming

"By my measure," he wrote magisterially, as if he were leading the debate rather than conceding, "there are 4.1 million boomers, 4.4 million Xers and 4.6 million Ys in Australia."

Salt then dug a deeper hole for himself by arguing that if Dick Smith is right to say Salt is not a demographer then neither is Bob Birrell (whose research Smith had used): "Professor Birrell's CV shows degrees in history, economics and sociology, not in demography." Salt ought to be aware that in the academic world demography is a category within sociology, and that Birrell has been publishing detailed research articles on the interactions of demography, economics, and society in peer-reviewed journals for several decades.