If x age group, social group, or &quot;middle class&quot; is experiencing an economic downturn - but the country as a whole is stable or upward - are they not still in an economic downturn?<p>This is a very common phenomenon with statistics... for example I frequently come across people citing that x time in history had early death rates - so you likely wouldn&#x27;t have lived past 40 - without explaining the majority of deaths were due to infant death from disease. But if they in fact made it past early childhood then those projected maximum age numbers were not relevant.<p>This is why it&#x27;s important to not plan based on global averages. One reason why conducting &quot;cohort analysis&quot; is very important in business analytics.