I’ve developed a rough rule of thumb that helps me remember who’s who
Are you (like me) confused by the many names and different dates ascribed to generations, in press coverage? Gen X, Baby Boomers, and so on. I’ve developed (for myself) a simple way to sort through it all, a way that enables me to identify their names and approximate dates, without having to look them up every time. I hope it helps you too, to relieve this little piece of confusion.
Of course everything here is necessarily approximate. But then so is the whole concept of different generations. It makes no sense to think of the last infant born under the name of one generation and the first infant born, one second later, under the name of a new generation to be markedly different in their habits or beliefs.
Wikipedia (my invariable starting point) defines a generation as “all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively.” Accurate, but not much help. In social science (Wikipedia continues) generation is also often used synonymously with cohort, meaning “people within a delineated population who experience the same significant events within a given period of time.” That’s more helpful, because it gives us a way to classify people by their experiences – which may also affect the way they behave and react to events, and so on. OK, now I have an understanding of why there’s a separation into generations.
But my mind can’t remember what are the defining experiences of a generation. So the dates are elusive. And so I came up with a simple and convenient rule of thumb that more or less fits press coverage.
These days we tend of think of children coming of age when they turn 18. OK then, we’ll separate the generations by 18 years.
A convenient and well-known starting point is the Baby Boom generation. World War 2 ended in 1945. The troops returned home and rejoiced in (ahem) activities that had been much more scarce for several years. And a large cohort of babies started to arrive in 1946. Hence the name Baby Boom. So far, so good.
These kids started to come of age 18 years later, in 1964. So let’s start the new generation then. And succeeding generations at 18-year intervals, so: 1982, 2000, 2018, and so on. (And, as I observed before, there’s no noticeable difference between the last 1963 baby and the first 1964 baby, so these are artificial and extremely approximate distinctions.)
What should the successive generations be called? Who knows? Well, there’s a mathematical convention of naming known quantities by the first few letters of the alphabet (a, b, c) and unknown quantities by the last few letters (x, y, z). So, if we don’t know, let’s call them Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Z. Or, for short, Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z.
So now we have: Baby Boom 1946-1963; Gen X 1964-1981; Gen Y 1982-1999; Gen Z 2000-2017.
Oh look: those Gen Y kids started to come of age at the turn of the century, indeed at the turn of the millennium (from the Latin word “mille” meaning a thousand). So they’re now popularly called the Millennial generation.
And so we end up with:
- (Baby) Boomers 1946-1963
- Gen Xers 1964-1981
- Millennials 1982-1999
- Gen Zers 2000-2017
In that case we have a new generation to name, starting in 2018. Oh well, there’s no obvious sequel to Z, and it’s too early to note their characteristics, so we’ll let the future take care of that naming problem.
Anyway, that’s how I remember the names and dates.
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For what it’s worth, my research (and you can guess that I researched it!) revealed some interesting angles.
For a start, Wikipedia notes that a generation is “the average period, generally considered to be about thirty years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children of their own.” That sounds more like it to me – 30 years separating generations, rather than 18 – but perhaps experiences these days come faster than before, and grouping generations by their experiences therefore shortens the period. I don’t know.
Who started the naming process? Certainly it is very convenient to name them. Apparently it was Gertrude Stein, who first used the name Lost Generation for those who were born just before 1900 and served in World War 1. After that, William Strauss and Neil Howe (“generational theorists”) named the generation that fought in World War 2 as the G.I. (for Government Issue) Generation; but Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation” gives rise to the more popular name for them. And Douglas Coupland (a late Baby Boomer) named the generation that followed the Boomers as Generation X.
Going back even further, and using different criteria (more related to overall experiences), the US Population Reference Bureau uses these names and dates:
- 1871-1889 New Worlders
- 1890-1908 Hard Timers
- 1909-1928 Good Warriors
- 1929-1945 Lucky Few
- 1946-1964 Baby Boomers
- 1965-1982 Generation X
- 1982-2001 New Boomers
And the Center for Generational Kinetics uses these names and dates for the five generations currently active in the US economy and workforce:
- Up to 1945 Traditionalists or Silent Generation
- 1946-1964 Baby Boomers
- 1965-1976 Generation X
- 1977-1995 Millennials or Gen Y
- 1996-present Gen Z, iGen or Centennials
And no doubt in other countries there would be still other classifications, because experiences differ by country. For example, I read (I don’t know if it’s a facetious comment) that the name “meat mountain” is used in Sweden for those born in the 1940s because the finance minister said that they are a giant mountain of meat who will put a great strain on the budget, and that the 1970s children in Norway are the “dessert generation” because times were so good. In Armenia, those born after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 are the “independence generation.” Israel has “Holocaust survivors.” South Africa has the “born free generation” for those born after the first post-apartheid election. And so on. The Millennials are the first generation that seems to share similar characteristics in many parts of the world; perhaps there might be a unification of names after them.
Anyway, there it is: different countries, different names, different dates. And that’s why, instead of trying to remember them all, I came up with my 18-year rule-of-thumb and remember Boomers, X, Y (or Millennials) and Z. That’ll do, for the moment.
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Takeaway
Remember 18-year intervals after World War 2, and the names Boomers, X, Y and Z.
9 Comments
I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.
Fun read. A pleasant change of pace.
Thank you! Every now and again I depart from the script …
Well, aren’t we just bored out of our minds. Thanks for undertaking the task to delineate the various generations. I find the topic of generations fascinating as each generation has a unique way of influencing the social, economical, political and investment environments we witness over the years. And each generation has its own characteristics which can also define what a generation is. The baby-boomer generation was, by far, the largest generation of its time. It has since lost that title to the Millennials. However, in 1964, the Boomers represented just over 40% of the U.S. population while the Yers represent just under 30% today — a significant difference in being major influencers. As well, the Boomer generation may be split into three sub-categories: the Woodstock Generation, the Me Generation, and the Yuppies — given certain characteristics associated with each. Perhaps the most unique characteristic of the Y generation is its diversity. I would also like to think that there is a unique generation that you and I grew up in which was the five years from 1941 to 1945. Due to WW2, this period had the lowest fertility rate of pretty well any period during the past century. We should get credit for it — as we were all lucky to be born Given the circumstances. Thanks for sharing.
Gosh, you know a lot more about this than I do — thanks for the insights!
Not really, just name-dropping. You can do this when you are old.
That Center for Generational Kinetics doesn’t do any kind of true research to find out what the generational spans truly are, because they use 1996 as the beginning of Gen Z, because of 9/11, but totally negate Y2K as being the X/Millennial defining event to separate them, something everyone all over the world alive at the time went through. If you were 21+ on 12/31/99 by definition you’re “of age” everywhere around the world (the oldest age of maturity is 21). This means those born 12/31/78 were 21 and over BEFORE Y2K, but the Center uses 1977 as the start of Millennials, ignoring the fact they were 22 by 12/31/99.
So, when Y2K happened, they suddenly became of age, despite being 21 in 1998? How is 23 any different than 21 or 22? The only reason that Center uses 1977 as the start is because its founder (Jason Dorsey) was born in 1978, and desperately wants to be a Millennial, completely ignoring his 1980’s childhood, instead actind like he’s a 90’s child, despite being 18, 19, 20, and 21 in the 90’s, years that would be considered legal adulthood in the US. Since he was in school with those born in very late 1977 (thus they missed the cutoff for starting school a year earlier), he deems those people all as Millennials, since they began graduating college in 2000.
That’s why the Center uses 1977 as its start, but ends it in 1995, because it considers 9/11 to be the defined end since those in school were old enough to comprehend (or at least have solid memories by being in school during) September 11, 2001, but has no defined event as the beginning. If he’d use Y2K as the defining beginning like he does 9/11 as the end, he’d force himself to be an X’er and he doesn’t want to do that, he wants to be a Millennial, thus 1977 begins Millennials according to their “research” which wasn’t really true research, because again 1999 is the last year before Y2K, and all those who were legally able to toast in Y2K should be X and older.
Thanks. I have no idea about any of this.
You need to edit and correct the years per generation. You are off at least a year of each generation ending.
Indeed I would … except that (a) even the two main sources I referred to can’t agree on what are the “right” years, (b) those years are simply approximations anyway, because it makes no sense to say that people born a day apart (Dec 31 and Jan 1) can belong to two different generations, and (c) as I said at the start of the piece, I’m looking for a rough rule of thumb, not an exact formula that will replicate what either of those two sources thinks.