The Victors

The original definition was just a demographic observation, which is that the total fertility rate for American birthing persons was above three between 1946 and 1964 inclusive. Nineteen years is of course way too long to be a generation in any cultural sociological sense -- somebody who was born in 1964 had completely different formative influences than somebody born in 1946. But it stuck and on top of that it led to things like Generation X being defined in a similarly broad way in terms of demographics, which again makes no sense. In fact it makes more sense to speak of early boomers, middle boomers, and late boomers. I think the middle boomers people born in the early to mid-50s -- are what most people are referencing when they think of baby boomers.