Quote:
Originally Posted by baddog
I always thought it was 20 years. Do they modify that stuff?
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it appears so, at least according to several articles i've read on the matter.
A generation is the time from the birth of a child to the birth of that child's first child. It varies from family to family, and can range from 20 years (or less) to 40 (or more, in rare cases).
While the usual accepted length is between 20 and 25 years, this tends to be too short (which, estimating large numbers, can cause problems).
Quite notable is the fact that, in general, the female generation length is shorter than the male generation length, because males are usually older than females in couples.
Females average around 28, and males average around 32. The difference, however, is highly culture-dependent, and may have been a bit different hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Where it used to be considered reasonable to estimate about 4 generations per century for purposes of genealogy calculations, it is now considered more reasonable to estimate 3 generation per century- even for older estimations.