Baby boomer, x-gen, and y-gen

"Baby Boomer" Come From? When World War II ended in 1945, thousands of young men returned from service, got jobs, got married and started families. This resulted in a significant jump in the birth rate (more than 1 million more babies born in 1946, compared to 1945) and this increased birth rate continued until 1964. Because of the "baby boom" between 1946 and 1964, babies born during those years are called "baby boomers." Depending on which government agency you ask, there were between 77 million (US Dept. of Health & Human Services) to 79 million (US Census Bureau) baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964. "What Defines Baby Boomers?" Many marketing experts and sociologists have attempted to define baby boomers as if we think as a group, but that's not any more true of baby boomers than it is of generations that came before or after. Baby boomers played the biggest part in shaping the music, politics and culture of the 60's and 70's, and continue to have considerable clout today, simply because there are so many of us. Generation X is the term often applied to the generation born between 1964 and 1981, right after the end of the post-World War II baby boom (1946-1964) that gave boomers their name. Generation X is often abbreviated as Gen X, and members of Generation X are commonly referred to as Gen Xers. For a time, Generation X was called the "baby bust" generation, because of the declining birth rate that started in 1964, officially ending the post-war baby boom. Generation Y refers to the population group in the US born from somewhere around 1976 to around 2000. They are sometimes called echo boomers because some of them are the children of baby boomers. On the other hand, some Generation Y children, especially those born in the late 1980s or afterwards, may be the grandchildren of baby boomers. Other names for this group are the Millennials, the Internet Generation, and the abbreviated Gen Yor Gen Yers. There are some vagaries in defining Generation Y, as it can encompass two generations. A child born in 1976, probably to a true baby boomer, could easily have a child born in 1996, 20 years later. There’s no official consensus on the beginning or end term of Generation Y, and the term may be considered as a pejorative one, just as the term Generation X is sometimes used in a negative sense. Echo boomer may be inaccurate too, since the real rise in birth rates that defines many boomers having babies is much more limited. This increase in birthrates, approaching levels of the last years of the baby boom is defined as between 1989-1993, a much smaller span than that which defines Gen Y.