Generations · 4 of 11
The biggest generation of the century, and the one everyone has an opinion about.
Who are the Baby Boomers?
Baby Boomers were born from 1946 to 1964, when American births jumped after the Second World War and then fell back. It is the only generation defined by a measurable change: 76 million babies in nineteen years. They grew up with television, the space race, civil rights and the Vietnam War.
The years, by who you ask
Nobody owns these lines. Each researcher draws them for their own reasons, so the edges move.
Pew notes this is the only generation with edges set by the data rather than by judgement: births surged in 1946 and declined sharply after 1964, around the time the birth control pill reached the market. Births topped 4 million a year from 1954 through 1964. 3,4,1
The world they were born into
What was going on while they were small, and while they were young enough for it to stick.
- The boom1946–1957US births jumped from 2.9 million in 1945 to 3.4 million in 1946 and peaked at 4.3 million in 1957. 5
- The screen1950sThey were the first generation raised on television: TV went from about 9 percent of American homes in 1950 to 46 million of 53 million in 1960. 6
- The sky1957–1969The Soviet Union launched Sputnik on 4 October 1957. On 20 July 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and an estimated 650 million people watched Neil Armstrong on television. 7,8
- Civil rights1964President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on 2 July 1964, banning discrimination in public places and in employment. 9
- Vietnam1965–1975The war that divided them from their parents: 58,220 American military dead. Four students were killed at Kent State on 4 May 1970; Saigon fell on 30 April 1975. 10,11
- Money1973–1982They started work in the Great Inflation: oil prices quadrupled after the 1973 embargo, and inflation passed 14 percent in 1980. 12
Where the name came from
"Baby boom" was American slang for any jump in births from the 1870s, and was applied to the postwar wave as early as 1945. "Baby boomer" for the people themselves was in use by 1963. 13
How they're usually described
The generalities: what researchers and writers say about the group as a whole. A group portrait, never a person.
Big. In 1964 Boomers were 37 percent of the US population. Their number peaked at 79 million in 1999 and stood at 67 million in 2024. 1
Watched. Pew notes the media have followed them "from the get-go", which is one reason so many generational stereotypes start with them. 14
More trusting than those after them. In Pew's 2014 survey 40 percent of Boomers said most people can be trusted, the highest of any generation asked; 19 percent of Millennials said so. 15
Next to the other generations
Who raised them, who they raised, and where the friction and the common ground show up in the data.
The Greatest and Silent Generations. Their parents. The generation gap of the 1960s was theirs: in 1969 Gallup found 74 percent of Americans saw one. 16
Millennials. Mostly their children. The friction runs both ways in public: Boomers complaining about "entitled" Millennials, and in 2019 Millennials and Gen Z answering with "OK boomer". 17
Gen X. Their younger siblings and, for older Boomers, sometimes their children. Pew describes Gen X as a small bridge between the noisy Boomers and Millennials. 14
The data on conflict. For all the noise, Pew's 2009 survey found only 26 percent of Americans saw strong conflict between young and old, and found rock music, the Boomers' music, had become everyone's music: two-thirds listened to it at least sometimes. 16
In the long cycle
A theory, not a finding: Strauss and Howe's idea that generations come round in a four-part pattern. How the theory works, and its critics.
Strauss and Howe make the Boomers their modern Prophets: born in the confident High after the war, they came of age leading the Awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, and in the theory they are the moralising elders of the current Crisis. Their claimed counterpart is the Missionary Generation born 1860 to 1882. 2
The decades they were born in
Everyone born from 1950 to 1959 is a Boomer by every source. The 1960s are split: 1960 to 1964 are Boomers to Pew, while Strauss and Howe start Gen X in 1961.
Questions people ask
What years are Baby Boomers?
1946 to 1964, the years the US Census Bureau and Pew use, when births rose sharply after the Second World War and fell back after 1964. Strauss and Howe use 1943 to 1960.
How many Baby Boomers were born?
About 76 million in the United States from 1946 to 1964. Births passed 4 million a year from 1954 to 1964 and peaked at 4.3 million in 1957.
What does "OK boomer" mean?
A 2019 catchphrase used by Millennials and Gen Z as a weary reply to older people seen as dismissive of their worries. It spread on TikTok and was widely debated, with some calling it ageist.
Are late Boomers different from early Boomers?
Often, yes. Someone born in 1946 was a teenager in the early 1960s; someone born in 1964 was a teenager in the late 1970s, in a very different economy. That is one reason researchers warn that a nineteen-year generation hides a lot.
Seventy-six million Boomers. One card with your name on it.
Your generation is the crowd you were born into. Your card is worked out from your own birthday, minute and place: the sky that night, your numbers and your Chinese year. Sealed until you print it.
What your card covers
See all six pages, sealedFold the pages back
1 Who you are
2 The machine says
3 Your sky
4 Love & your people
5 Work & money
6 Your year ahead
Sources
- The oldest Baby Boomers turn 80 in 2026, Pew Research Center, 9 January 2026. Read on .
- Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist and Suzanne Newcombe (Inform), 2017, updated 15 January 2021. Read on .
- Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins, Pew Research Center, Michael Dimock, 17 January 2019. Read on .
- The Whys and Hows of Generations Research, Pew Research Center, 3 September 2015. Read on .
- NCHS – Births and General Fertility Rates: United States, 1909–2018, CDC, NCHS (data.gov dataset). Read on .
- Philo Farnsworth and the Invention of Television, U.S. Census Bureau History, September 2023. Read on .
- Sputnik, NASA History. Read on .
- Apollo 11 Mission Overview, NASA. Read on .
- Civil Rights Act (1964), U.S. National Archives. Read on .
- Vietnam War U.S. Military Fatal Casualty Statistics, U.S. National Archives. Read on .
- Ending the Vietnam War, 1969–1973, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Read on .
- The Great Inflation, 1965–1982, Federal Reserve History, Michael Bryan. Read on .
- Generational Cohorts, Wordorigins.org, David Wilton, 20 October 2020. Read on .
- Generation X: America's neglected 'middle child', Pew Research Center, Paul Taylor and George Gao, 5 June 2014. Read on .
- Millennials in Adulthood, Pew Research Center, 7 March 2014. Read on .
- Forty Years After Woodstock, A Gentler Generation Gap, Pew Research Center, 12 August 2009. Read on .
- "OK, boomer": How a viral catchphrase is reshaping generational relationships, CBS News, Natacha Larnaud, 8 November 2019. Read on .