Major Economic Crises that Shape East Asian Cohorts

Economic crises are important factors to consider when defining cohorts. They not only impact the current generations, but also the future ones in many different ways. However, unequal impact of the crises gives way to another way of segmenting the impacted cohorts.

In a conversation last week, a colleague of mine pointed out a major difference between his generation, who was born after 1975, and another born just a couple of years earlier in Korea. According to him, the financial crisis in Korea in 1997 was the main reason for this difference. He also mentioned the "failing generation" of Japan as the result of the economic downturns in the 1990s and early 2000s. These both are in line with the generation cohort concept that I wrote in a recent post.

I did a quick research on the issues and found out a couple of interesting points: