Baby

A Baby Boomer is someone who was born during the period of increased birth rates when economic prosperity rose in many countries following World War II. more...

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In the United States, the term is iconic and more properly capitalized as Baby Boomers and commonly applied to people with birth years after World War II (WW II) and before the Vietnam War, thus possibly comprising more than one generation. The Baby Boom is the iconic term widely used to refer to the American population and culture in particular, as post WW II demographics across the world did not mirror the sustained growth in American families over the same interval.

Causes of the Baby Boom

A large part of the Baby Boom was an after effect of World War II where the bombed out cities and fractured economies increased the needs for goods and services in unprecedented peacetime amounts. Consequently, the Arsenal of Democracy switched gears and started cranking out goods and materials for export, as America supplied the "free world" with goods to rebuild their own economies. This led to an unprecedented bubble of vigorous economic growth that didn't slow down until 1958. Furthermore, in the U.S. the G.I. Bill enabled record numbers of individuals to attend college and obtain, perhaps in most cases, the second college degree in their extended families. This led to an increase in education and granted higher incomes to families allowing them the resources to produce more children.

Definition

To date, there are various designations for the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation. In his book, Boomer Nation, Steve Gillon breaks Baby Boomers into two groups: Boomers, born between 1945 and 1957; and Shadow Boomers born between 1958 and 1963. In some cases the term Shadow Boomer is incorrectly applied to the children of the Baby Boomers. However this group is more accurately referred to as Echo Boomers.

William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their book Generations, include those conceived by soldiers on leave during the war, putting the generation's birth years at 1943 to 1960. Howe and Strauss argue that persons born between 1961 and 1964 have political and cultural patterns very different from those born between 1955 and 1960 and fit into what those writers term the Thirteenth Generation or Generation X (also known as the Cold War generation) born between 1961 and 1981. As the influence of Strauss and Howe has grown, a smaller number of people still accept Baby Boomers as including those born after 1961, although there are some who put the dates at 1946 to 1963 because of the number of significant "Gen-X" figures born in 1964. There were over 79 million babies born during that generation.

It can be argued that the defining event of early baby boomers was the Vietnam War and the protest over the draft, but it would be certainly correct to say it was the generation of The Beatles, The Motown Sound, Beats and Hippies. Conscription in the United States ended in 1973 so anyone born after 1955 was not subject to the draft. This argues for a ten year range 1946 to 1955 and this would fit the thirtysomething demographic covered by the TV show of the same name. This means that those born in the years 1956 to 1965 would be Generation X in the late 1980s and would be twenty something as a response. On the other hand, if the gross number of births were the indicator, there would be no reason for 1964 to be the ending year as the number of births did not decline in 1965. The choice of 1964 as the end date may not have been set by a demographer but by more popular writers and the source of the 1964 year has not been pinned down yet. The entire controversy over naming and dating between the boomer and the Gen X cohorts could be explained by noting that the boomer years of 1946-64 is too long for a cultural generation yet may still mark a period of increased births while the cultural disaffinities of those born after 1957 (thereby missing the draft and being too young to be part of the 1960s) could be captured by the Gen X of Douglas Coupland, the term "X" has itself been transformed to cover a later cohort.

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