re: Forbes Mag - Obama outperforms Reagan on jobs growth and investing

quote:

---

Because any declines following the recession are relatively very small and their numbers are dropping as a percentage of the population, so any affect is minimized.

---

Even the White House report that was linked by Big12Fan, which obviously has strong incentive to minimize the drop in participation rate, does not make the claims you are making. They claim that part of the decline is due to aging, part of the decline is due on the economy(not negligible like you state), and unknown causes for the recent decline. Although, they appear to overweight the influence of aging (their models consistently under predicts compare to the observed data until 2008), even they can't support the extent of your claims.