Eight out of 10 "emerging trends" of the 2000s New Strategist Press editorial director Cheryl Russell writes about here contain the operative term "decline."
At least two of those macro trends--each of which meaningfully impact the entire housing ecosystem and its many interconnected business, social, and cultural arenas pertain to the very nature of household composition. These phenomena are featured in Russell's new edition of New Strategist's Demographics of the U.S.: Trends and Projections, a reference tool for trend trackers.
This should, in turn, materially impact what developers develop and what builders build, and what investors invest in. Here, according to Cheryl Russell are two of the Top 10 emerging trends:
- The marriage decline: The Millennial generation is postponing marriage longer than any previous cohort of young adults. Delayed marriage has contributed to other emerging trends—the decline of homeownership, the baby bust, and population loss in nonmetropolitan areas.
- The birth decline: The number of births in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 4.3 million. Since then, births have fallen in nearly every year and have been stuck below 4 million since 2009. Fertility rates are at a record low for women under age 30, with Hispanic fertility falling the most. The steep decline in Hispanic fertility may delay by a few years the coming minority majority forecast for the 2040s.
We see from other research here, a correlative trend, that women in the United States spend less of their time married, from about 70% to 50%, among age cohorts ranging from Depression Era women to mid Baby Boom era females.
The reasons, conclude Center for Retirement Research researchers Alicia H. Munnell, Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher, and Sara Ellen King, are three-fold:
- fewer women get married;
- when they do marry, they get married later; and
- more women end up divorced.
What do we take away from standing back and recognizing such a profound change in the fiber and fabric of society, business, and culture?
At least, in part, it's evident that strategic leadership of companies whose businesses rely--above all--on a solid understanding of how households work, and who makes them up, and what they need, has to evolve, to transform, to improve the relationship between the organization and its ultimate consumer base.
This is why we're encourged to hear of and see progress on the gender diversity front among public company boards of directors.
In April, the public home building company business' first-ever female Chairman of the Board of Directors of a top 10 public, Sheryl Palmer, succeeded Timothy Eller in that role at Taylor Morrison.
We've noted progress in the diversification of boards, and as Directors & Boards staffer Scott Chase notes, Equilar's Gender Diversity Index--a quarterly update of female directors in the Russell 3000--found that about one in four new director appointees in the first quarter of this year have been women.
We've seen that progress take shape on the boards of Lennar, and KB Home, and The New Home Company, which have more than one female member of their respective boards, and a number of other companies who either have had, or have added women to their boards.
And now, while board veterans like Barbara Alexander, and Donna Shalala, and Christine Garvey, and others were the ground-breakers in a business world dominated by males, fissures of light and change show signs of momentum. Directors & Boards' Scott Chase writes:
At Directors & Boards we occasionally can divine a new concern among women directors through a careful reading of the governance “passion statements” that we ask of our Directors to Watch each year. Cybersecurity, of course, continues to loom large in the worldview of these accomplished executives, but in 2017 that other potential villain (or ally, depending on the circumstances) of the digital age, social media, has taken a seat front and center in their concerns. The speed and the ubiquity of corporate missteps or comments that “go viral” continue to catch CEOs and their crisis communications teams flatfooted. When management is caught in a bind, inevitably the question, “Where was the board?” makes its appearance.
That’s where diversity comes in: A recent study co-authored by the WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation found that female directors generally are more concerned about risks, and are more willing to address them, than are their male colleagues.
Directors & Boards recognized two of home building's own strong strategic voices among its 2017 Directors to Watch line-up, the New Home Company director Cathey Lowe and TopBuild director Margaret Whelan here.
Cathey Lowe's nugget of wisdom for home building organizations--public and private--is this:
“One of the barriers to diversity in the boardroom is that board members naturally tend to select other board members similar to themselves. How to find common ground? When women gain management experience in a male-dominated industry, such as construction or oil and gas, they can leverage that background to build synergy with board members in those industries. By focusing on gender-neutral skills, such as financial expertise, women can communicate through shared objectives and goals. Women need to find ways to bridge the gender gap in order to contribute at the board level.”
Whelan, both a student and a leader when it comes to how enterprises in the residential development, investment, and home building operations space can thrive, notes:
“Board structure and refreshment have never been more important. With uncertainly at all-time highs, boards need to leverage diverse perspectives to effectively see around the corner and protect the interests of all stakeholders.”
All stakeholders is right. And the stakeholder more strategic leaders lose more sleep over has to be the consumer household, which is in a state of dramatic transformation from the ways it worked for decades into the ways it will work for the ones to come.
