Baby Boomer

Who are the baby boomers?

Young males returning to the United States, Canada, and Australia following tours of duty overseas during World War II began families, which brought about a significant number of new children into the world. This dramatic increase in the number of births from 1946 to 1964 (1947 to 1966 in Canada and 1946-1961 in Australia) is called the Baby Boom. In the United States, approximately 79 million babies were born during the Baby Boom. Much of this cohort of nineteen years (1946-1964) grew up with Woodstock, the Vietnam War, and John F. Kennedy as president. In 2006, the oldest Baby Boomers are turning 60 years old, including the first two Baby Boomer presidents, Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in the first year of the Baby Boom, 1946. In the 1930s to early 1940s, new births in the United States averaged around 2.3 to 2.8 million each year. In 1945, the number was 2.8 million births; it marked the beginning of the Baby Boom. In 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom, new births in the U.S. skyrocketed to 3.47 million births. New births continued to grow throughout the 1940s and 1950s, leading to a peak in the late 1950s with 4.3 million births in 1957 and 1961. (There was a dip to 4.2 million births in 1958) By the mid-sixties, the birth rate began to slowly fall. In 1964 (the final year of the Baby Boom), 4 million babies were born in the U.S. and in 1965, there was a significant drop to 3.76 million births. From 1965 on, there was a plunge in the number of births to a low of 3.14 million births in 1973, lower than any year’s births since 1945. From 1973 on, Generation X was nowhere near a populous as their parents. The total births rose to 3.6 million in 1980 and then 4.16 million in 1990. For 1990 on, the number of births has remained somewhat constant – from 2000 to now, the birth rate has hovered at 4 million annually. It’s amazing that 1957 and 1961 are the peak birth years in raw number of births for the...