K=D8HB wrote:
wrote

But I would note that the shrinkage occurred *after* the
April 2000 reductions in both Morse Code and written
testing for all available license classes. IOW, making
the licenses easier to get in 2000 did not result in
sustained growth.

Two questions:

1) Is this shrinkage due to...
a. Less new applicants
b. Increased attrition

From what I can see at hamdata.com and AH0A.org, it seems to
me that the number of new hams has been slowly increasing
since at least 1997 (which is as far back as AH0A.org goes)
but attrition has been rising even faster.

How much of the attrition increase is due to "involuntary"
causes (SKs, hams in nursing homes, etc.) vs. "voluntary"
causes (loss of interest) is a matter of pure speculation.
I don't have good data on that one way or the other.

It does seem to me, however, that when a survey says 22% of
recently-licensed new hams interviewed have *never* set up
their own station and gotten on the air with it, something's
amiss in the "interest" department.

We sometimes see statistics about the "average age of US
hams today is XX" and predictions of doom for the future
as today's hams become SKs. What we don't see are statistics
on how the "average age" was computed (mean? median? mode?)
nor the age distribution (bell curve? exponential?). Nor
do we see stats on what the "average age" was 10, 20, 30
years ago.

Looking around at club meetings and hamfests isn't a good
sample because a lot of us don't go to those things very
often.

2) Are easier tests the cause of the shrinkage...
a. Yes
b. No

No good way to tell. One thing is certain: The test
reductions have not resulted in a flood of new hams
compared to before the test reductions.

One possible explanation is that the real problem
is publicity and image, not license requirements.

If people don't know what ham radio is, the license
requirements have no effect on them.

Another factor is that if the license requirements
are made "too easy", what you may have are some folks who
have a license but no station because it's "too
difficult" for them to set one up. Then they forget
about ham radio and go on to something else.

---

One thing I remember clearly from my newcomer days
as a 12-13 year old is that once I found out what
amateur radio was, and how to get started, the license
requirements were "not a problem". They were simply
a challenge. If there had not been a Novice license,
I simply would have gone for General right out of the
box.

A lot of the kids I knew then, and know now, are the
same way when they are interested in something.

73 de Jim, N2EY