BSA's flagship program, troops for boys 11-17 years of age, has been in a constant decline since membership peaked in 1973. It has been analyzed to exhaustion, and they are well aware of it. The big bolt from BSA over homosexuality occurred during 2013-14. The National Executive Committee, i.e., ~27 volunteer national officers (virtually all executives from Fortune 500 companies), commissioned a study which predicted the worse case scenario would be a decline in overall membership (all age groups, including adults) would be ~12%. And they were fine with that. Since 2013 when BSA voted at its annual business meeting to amend the membership standard to include open homosexual youth, they went on in 2015 to vote for inclusion of open homosexual adults. Now in 2017 the transsexual barrier has fallen - they didn't even wait to put it to a vote before the annual business meeting in May.
Youth Membership Statistics
Year Tiger/Cub/Webelos Troop
1970 2,438,000 1,916,000
2015 1,261,340 840,654
change -48.3% -56.2%
These numbers agree with you prediction that BSA is dying, but the trend has been in place for ~42 years. What would really be interesting to compare would be the U.S. Census statistics for male youths 10-15 years of age for 1970 and 2010. BSA calls this statistic TAY (Total Available Youth, which they get from local school systems). I imagine it would paint an even grimmer picture.
I have a feeling that the BSA execs hired a “consultant” to come up with this strategy. Never hire a consultant: they are NOT invested in the problem they are hired to analyze and solve, and they have no finger on the pulse of the organization’s culture.
Regardless, scouting represents low-tech skills and culture in an increasingly high-tech-interest generation. I chalk a lot of the loss of interest up to that. Who’s interested in knots when we have zip ties?
Another thing that has had an effect is that uniforms were cool up until the 1960s.