When Eagle "got easier" (some rounded math)
I have some numbers from a 100th anniversary book that claims the following numbers:
1912 had the first Eagle Scout
1965 had the 500,000th one
1982 had the 1,000,000th one
2009 had the 2,000,000th one
Lets do some math:
1965-1912= 53 years for 500k Eagles
if we divide 500k(total Eagles) by 53 (years), we get an average of ROUGHLY 9,434 Eagles per year for this time bracket. If we continue this math...
1982-1965 = 17 years for 500k Eagles
500k/17 = ROUGHLY 29,412 Eagles per year
2009-1982 = 27 years for 1 MILLION Eagles
1M/27= ROUGHLY 37,037 Eagles per year
An average doesn't account for the impact of year by year total membership changes, but I think it's still pretty telling. this old article also shows that there was a huge dip in Eagle scouts in the early 70s, but that is still part of the 1965-1982 (500k in 17 years) bracket and not noticeable in this method.
There are some facts that could explain some of these: the internet makes some aspects of earning merit badges easier, getting Eagle has been a motivation for people to join in the first place, there were less total scouts pre 1965, and probably many more. However, even compared to 2009, the year of scrutiny for "it got easier!!!" should be 1973 as that was 46,966 scouts, compared to 1972's 29,089 and 1974's 36,739. Interestingly, though the average amount of Eagles per year in these samples did go up, it wasn't even an extra 10k people from 1965-1982 compared to 1982-2009. this other old article also makes a point about getting Eagle after 1965 was harder than before. The numbers just don't support the rank magically getting a lot easier to earn, from 1912-2009, at least. I can't really speak to what it's like now due to lack of data, but I hope you enjoyed my little stats ramble.