The Last Baby Boomers were born in 1964.

[kurtcagle]

49. Demographic definitions

I've argued before that 1936 to 1955 makes more sense. The original resource took a half cycle, covering roughly 18 years, as Strauss and Howe's definition of a generation, defining it as the period from midpoint to midpoint of the cycle.

The problem with this was only obvious in retrospect. First, it is very likely that the Boomer generation would have extended considerably longer if it hadn't been for the introduction of birth control in the early 1960s, while at the same time, most of the characteristics that described the boomers really go back to 1941. The birthrate also troughed in 1936, and wouldn't again until almost 1974, so if you use a trough to trough metric (which is more meaningful and definitive) then you're looking at a full cycle that extends 38 years, with a mid-point in 1955, with each "generation" being about 19 years. This also fits into significant world events just as well, which is I think the weakest part of S&H's thesis, The next peak by that measure would have been 1991, which was really where birthrate plateau'd. Since 1991, the birthrate stayed mostly unchanged until 2009, in the wake of the economic meltdown, and has been decreasing steadily after that from 16% to 13% today.

Generationally, those born in the early was years to the mid 1950s had most of the major benefits of the Boomers, and it's perhaps not insignificant that most of the big companies that were important in the 1990s and after were started by men born in 1955 (Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs). Yet those born afterwards (through the 1960s) have faced dropping birth rates, and with it the reduced set of opportunities that seemed to characterize those in the GenX generation. Also by that measure, the Boomers aren't halfway through retirement - they're almost all retired. This also means that they will end up getting the lion's share of pension funds, state funding and so forth, even as we've been systematically cutting all of those now for the last fifty years since this generation came of age.

Finally, note that this more closely matches the observation that Millennials are a lot more culturally cohesive if viewed as having been children of the 1990s and beyond. Those born in the 1980s in general, are much more like those born in the 1970s than those in the 1990s. Of course, it also means that we're just now seeing the birth of the next generation after the Millennials (really, those since about 2008, meaning that most of them are about ten years old).