Baby Boomers Make an Entry
I never knew I was referred to as one of the baby boomers. At first, it felt a little awkward, but once I did some research into baby boomers, I realized how fortunate I am to be one. I was born in 1961…barely on the verge of being in the group known as Generation X. I now follow many others who have retired, and are enjoying their golden years. In a short while, many more will follow into retirement, and that would be the end of a super generation of workers.
In chronological order, the group known as baby boomers follows the Silent Generation. This group precedes Generation X. The term “baby boomer” is often used to describe those who entered the world between 1946 and 1964. This is during the second half of the 20th century.
Depending on the nation, the dates, the demographic situation, and the cultural markers may vary.
The baby boom has been compared to both a “shockwave” and “the pig in the python,” among other things.
Most baby boomers are members of the Greatest or Silent Generations. They often have late Gen X and Millennial children as well. Older members of Generation Z may have late baby boomers as parents.
Western education changed dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s.
Education underwent enormous changes during the 1950s and 1960s in the West. Both, as a result of the Cold War’s ideological struggle, and as a continuation of the interwar era.
The oldest turned 18 in 1964. This rather large group of young people entered adolescence in the 1960s and 1970s. They and the people around them came up with very different ways to talk about their generation. It was the time social movements started. This includes the 1960s counterculture and its backlash.
Due to the large number of young people born after World War II, many countries were very unstable during this time.
Boomers in China experienced the Cultural Revolution and the one-child restriction as adults. The boomers’ perceptions were very much changed by these shifts. Also, in part, by society’s recent tendency to define the world generations.
This generation reached an adult height and went through puberty earlier than the ones before them.
Baby boomers were born in wealthy Europe and North America
Many baby boomers grew up in Europe and North America during a period of rising prosperity. With government support for postwar housing and education, many believed that things would get better over time. Higher-income earners and educated people were often the most demanding of improvements.
Due to low birth rates and an aging population, baby boomers are the largest group in many developed countries at the beginning of the 21st century. They are the second largest age group in the US, right after millennials.
A notable rise in the birth rate is referred described as a “baby boom.” Several newspaper reporters, notably Sylvia F. Porter in a column in the May 4, 1951, issue of the New York Post, based their description of the post-World War II population growth as a “boom” on the 2,357,000 increase in the U.S. population between 1940 and 1950.
Leslie J. Nason coined “baby boomers” in a January 1963 Daily Press report
The term “baby boomer” was first used in a Daily Press story from January 1963 by Leslie J. Nason. He described a tremendous rise in college enrollments as the oldest boomers reached adulthood.
The Washington Post article from January 23, 1970, is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as the source of the term’s contemporary usage.
The following organizations, including
- The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary,
- Pew Research Center,
- S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
- Federal Reserve Board,
- Australian Bureau of Statistics,
- Gallup,
- YouGov, and
- Australia’s Social Research Center,
…all agree that the baby boomer generation includes people born between 1946 and 1964.
Baby boomers were born in the US between mid-1946 and mid-1964
Baby boomers are those who were “born in the United States between mid-1946 and mid-1964,” according to the United States Census Bureau. The baby boom generation, described by Landon Jones in his 1980 book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, as existing between 1946 and 1964.
Different people have defined the baby boom era in different ways.
The social generation of boomers is defined by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe as the group of people born between 1943 and 1960. These were too young to have any memories of World War II but old enough to recall the postwar American High before John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Ontario baby boomers were born between 1947 and 1966
A boomer in Ontario, Canada is someone who was born between 1947 and 1966. This is a period during which more than 400,000 babies were born, according to David Foot. Foot is the author of Boom, Bust and Echo: Profiting from the Demographic Shift in the 21st Century (1997). But, he concedes that this is a demographic definition and that it might not be as precise as culture.
Doug Owram contends that although the Canadian boom occurred between 1946 and 1962, boomers globally were born between the late 1940s and roughly 1955 or 1956. It is possible for those who were born in the 1960s to feel alienated from the cultural markers of the older boomers.
SUMMARY
- This group precedes Generation X. The term “baby boomer” is often used to describe those who entered the world between 1946 and 1964, during the second half of the 20th century.
- Most baby boomers are members of the Greatest or Silent Generations, and they often have late Gen X and Millennial children as well.
- A notable rise in the birth rate is referred described as a “baby boom.”
- Several newspaper reporters, notably Sylvia F. Porter in a column in the May 4, 1951, issue of the New York Post, based their description of the post-World War II population growth as a “boom” on the 2,357,000 increase in the U.S. population between 1940 and 1950.
- Baby boomers are those who were “born in the United States between mid-1946 and mid-1964,” according to the United States Census Bureau.
