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Baby boomer
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Baby boomer is a term used to describe a person who was born during the Post-World War II baby boom between 1946 and the early 1960s. Following World War II, several English-speaking countries -- the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- experienced an unusual spike in birth rates, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the baby boom. The terms "baby boomer" and "baby boom", along with others expressions, are also used in countries with demographics that did not mirror the sustained growth in American families over the same interval.
DemographicsIf the gross number of births were the indicator, births began to decline from the peak in 1957 (4,300,000), but fluctuated or did not decline by much more than 40,000 (1959-1960) to 60,000 (1962-1963) until a sharp decline from 1964 (4,027,490) to 1965 (3,760,358). This sharp decline resulted from millions of women using birth control pills, which were introduced in 1960 in the U.S., and widely used by 1964. This makes 1965 a good year to mark the end of the baby boom in the U.S. However, it is important to note that 1964 is a nationwide average. Although it is true that 1946 marks the beginning of the boom nationwide, the end of the boom (the year of baseline birthrates returning to pre-war levels) on a state-by-state basis varied a great deal spanning throughout the 1960s.
While 1945-1965 reflect the post-World War II demographic boom in births, there is a growing consensus among generational experts that two distinct cultural generations occupy these years. The conceptualization that has gained the most public acceptance is that of a 1942-1953 Baby Boom Generation, followed by a 1954-1965 Generation Jones. Boomers and Jonesers had dramatically different formative experiences which gave rise to dramatically different collective personalities. Other monikers have been sometimes used to describe the younger cohort, like "Trailing Edge Boomers", "Late Boomers", and "Shadow Boomers". In his book Boomer Nation, Steve Gillon states that the baby boom began in 1946 and ends in 1960, but he divides Baby Boomers into two groups: Boomers, born between 1945 and 1957; and Shadow Boomers born between 1958 and 1964. Further, in Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, author Brent Green defines Leading-Edge Boomers as those born between 1946 and 1955. This group is a self-defining generational cohort or unit because its members all reached their late teen years during the height of the Vietnam War era, the defining historical event of this coming-of-age period. Green describes the second half of the demographic baby boom, born from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s as either Trailing-Edge Boomers or Generation Jones. In some cases the term Shadow Boomer is incorrectly applied to the children of the Baby Boomers; this group is more accurately referred to as Echo Boomers.
It can be argued that the defining event of early Baby Boomers was the Vietnam War and the protest over the draft, which ended in 1973. Since anyone born after 1955 was not subject to the draft, this argues for the ten years including 1946 to 1955 as defining the baby boomers. This would fit the thirtysomething demographic covered by the TV show of the same name which aired from 1987-1991. The cultural disaffinities of those born after 1955 (thereby missing the draft and being too young to be part of the 1960s) could be captured by the Gen X of Douglas Coupland in his book . The term "X" has itself been transformed to cover a later cohort.
In the United States, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born in Philadelphia on January 1, 1946, at 12:00:01 a.m., is generally recognized as the nation's first baby boomer. Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher, applied for Social Security benefits on 15 October 2007 over the Internet at an event attended by Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue. . This signaled the start of an expected avalanche of applications from the post World War II war generation.
United KingdomIn the United Kingdom, the pattern of increased birth rates was more likely to decrease within six months. There was a sharp post-World War II peak in 1947, when more babies were born than in any year since the post-World War I peak in 1920, followed by a decline, followed by a broader but lower peak in the 1960s. Thus British Baby Boomers are younger than their American counterparts and had not risen to such prominence when the term was coined. The two peaks can clearly be seen in the age structure of England and Wales.
Soviet UnionIn the former Soviet Union, members of the birth upswing after World War II are called the Sputnik Generation after the Soviet-satellite launched in 1957. One of the many aspects of the competition between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. which characterized the Cold War was competition in birth rate.
AustraliaThe Australian Bureau of Statistics defines the Baby Boomers as “those who were born in Australia or overseas during the years 1946 to 1964”. In fact the fertility rate began its rapid rise in 1946, peaking in 1961 and by 1965 it had dropped just below the 1946 level.
Characteristics Size and economic impactSeventy-six million American children were born between 1945 and 1964, representing a cohort that is significant on account of its size alone. In 2004, the UK baby boomers held 80% of the UK's wealth and bought 80% of all top of the range cars, 80% of cruises and 50% of skincare products.
In addition to the size of the group, Steve Gillon has suggested that one thing that sets the baby boomers apart from other generational groups is the fact that "almost from the time they were conceived, Boomers were dissected, analyzed, and pitched to by modern marketers, who reinforced a sense of generational distinctiveness." This is supported by the articles of the late 1940s identifying the increasing number of babies as an economic boom, such as in the Newsweek article of August 9 1948, "Population: Babies Mean Business", or Time article of February 9 1948. The effect of the baby boom continued to be analyzed and exploited throughout the 1950s and 60s.
Boomers have often found difficulty managing their time and money due to an issue that other generations have not had a problem with. Because the Baby Boomer generation has found that their parents are living longer, their children are seeking a better and longer college education, and they themselves are having children later in life, the boomers have become "sandwiched" between generations. The "sandwich generation", coined in the 1980s, refers to baby boomers who must care for both elderly parents and young children at the same time.
The age wave theory suggests an impending economic slowdown when the boomers start retiring during 2007-2009.
Cultural identityThe baby boomers were the first group to be raised with televisions in the home, and television has been identified as "the institution that solidified the sense of generational identity more than any other." Starting in the 1950s, people in diverse geographic locations could watch the same shows, listen to the same news, and laugh at the same jokes. Television shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver showed idealized family settings. Later, the boomers watched scenes from the Vietnam War and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
The boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll, was another expression of their generational identity. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Motown Sound.
In 1993, Time magazine reported on the religious affiliations of baby boomers. Citing Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the articles stated that about 42% of baby boomers were dropouts from formal religion, a third had never strayed from church, and one-fourth of boomers were returning to religious practice. The boomers returning to religion were "usually less tied to tradition and less dependable as church members than the loyalists. They are also more liberal, which deepens rifts over issues like abortion and homosexuality."
It is jokingly said that, whatever year they were born, boomers were coming of age at the same time across the world; so that Britain was undergoing Beatlemania (which in fact occurred before the peak of the British baby boom in 1966) while people in the United States were driving over to Woodstock, organizing against the Vietnam War, or fighting and dying in the same war; boomers in Italy were dressing in mod clothes and "buying the world a Coke"; boomers in India were seeking new philosophical discoveries; American boomers in Canada had just found a new home after escaping the draft south of the border; Canadian Boomers were organizing support for Pierre Trudeau;. It is precisely because of these experiences that many believe trailing boomers (those born in the 1960s) belong to another cohort, as events that defined their coming of age have nothing in common with leading or core boomers (which Daniel Yankelovich and other demographers made perfectly clear).
In the 1985 study of US generational cohorts by Schuman and Scott, a broad sample of adults was asked, "What world events over the past 50 years were especially important to them?" For the baby boomers the results were:
- Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from 1946 to 1954)
- Memorable events: assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., political unrest, walk on the moon, Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom, civil rights movement, environmental movement, women's movement, protests and riots, experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances
- Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented
- Baby Boomer cohort #2 (born from 1955 to 1964)
- Memorable events: Watergate, Nixon resigns, the Cold War, the oil embargo, raging inflation, gasoline shortages
- Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism
Aging and end of life issuesAs of 1998, it was reported that a generation boomers had tended to avoid discussions and planning for their demise and avoided much long term planning. However, beginning at least as early as that year, there has been a growing dialogue on how to manage aging and end of life issues as the generation ages. In particular, a number of commentators have argued that Baby Boomers are in a state of denial regarding their own aging and death and are leaving an undue economic burden on their children for their retirement and care.
Journalist Jeff Chang wrote in his book Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, "Boomers seem to have had great difficulty imagining what could come after themselves."
One book, written by Colorado doctor Terry Grossman, titled "The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever", proposes how Baby Boomers might avoid death. On page 3 of the book, Grossman writes, unironically, "As an official member of the Baby Boomer Generation, I really and truly do not believe that it was intended for us to die. Death, if and when it occurs, clearly will represent a mistake of some kind."
The humor publication The Onion published a satirical article celebrating the anticipated large-scale deaths of Baby Boomers in the upcoming years, quoting one fictional expert as saying the Boomers are "the most odious generation America has ever produced."
James Love of BoomerDeathCounter.com claims that a Baby Boomer will die every 49.5 seconds in the USA during the year 2008.
Impact on history and cultureAn indication of the importance put on the impact of the boomer was the selection by Time magazine of the Baby Boom Generation as its 1967 "Man of the Year". As Claire Raines points out in ‘Beyond Generation X’, “never before in history had youth been so idealized as they were at this moment.” When Generation X came along it had much to live up to and to some degree has always lived in the shadow of the Boomers, more often criticized (‘slackers’, ‘whiners’ and ‘the doom generation’) than not.
One of the contributions made by the Boomer generation appears to be the expansion of individual freedom. Boomers often are associated with the civil rights movement, the feminist cause in the 1970s, gay rights, handicapped rights, and the right to privacy.
Baby boomers presently make up the lion's share of the political, cultural, industrial, and academic leadership class in the United States. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, born within sixty days of each other in mid-1946, are the first and second Baby Boomer U.S. presidents, and their careers in office illustrate the wide, often diverging, spectrum of values and attitudes espoused by this largest American generational group to date. To date, baby boomers also have the highest median household incomes in the United States.
See also
External links - Edward Cheung, . Long Wave Press, 2007.
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- About.com article about Canadian economics
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