Do you know of a source for reliable data on ham licenses that drills
down below the often quoted total licenses outstanding. Are there any
studies that estimate the number of active licenses and ages of the
holders and how those numbers have trended over time.

It looks like the bottom line is that back in
June 1997 there were 678,473 licensed hams
and in May of 1995 there were 664,972 licensed hams.
Thats a decrease of 2 percent over 8 years. Its a decline but not by
much.

Does anyone have statistics that go back three or four decades??



Part of the problem here is that the "base" demographic numbers of total US
population is changing. The increase or decrease in the absolute numbers of
hams is not germane.

A more accurate statistic for the last 40-50 years is the change in the
percentage of hams in the total US population.

Example:

say you have 200,000 hams in 1930 in a population of 200 million (1%) vs
250,000 in 2000 in a population of 350 million.
Even though you have an increase in the ABSOLUTE number of hams the
PERCENTAGE of hams is going down.
In this example: As a group, the relative impact and visibility of hams vs
the total US population is going down.

Does any one know the URL of an accurate set of historical ham population
data? Hopefuly from the very begiining of FCC licensing?

Dan Yemiola
AI8O