View source for Baby boomers

{{Short description|Cohort born from 1946 to 1964}}
{{Redirect-multi|2|Boomer|Baby Boomer|the video game|Baby Boomer (video game){{!}}''Baby Boomer'' (video game)|other uses}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2024}}
{{Generations Sidebar}}
'''Baby boomers''', often shortened to '''boomers''', are the [[demographic]] [[Cohort (statistics)|cohort]] preceded by the [[Silent Generation]] and followed by [[Generation X]]. The [[generation]] is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the [[mid-20th century baby boom]]. The dates, the demographic context, and the cultural identifiers may vary by country.<ref>{{cite book|last=Owram|first=Doug|title=Born at the Right Time|date=December 31, 1997|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-1-4426-5710-6|location=Toronto|doi=10.3138/9781442657106}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Little|first1=Bruce|last2=Foot|first2=David K.|last3=Stoffman|first3=Daniel|date=1998|title=Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift|journal=Foreign Policy|issue=113|pages=110|doi=10.2307/1149238|jstor=1149238|issn=0015-7228}}</ref><ref name="Salt2004">{{cite book|last=Salt|first=Bernard|title=The Big Shift|year=2004|location=South Yarra, Victoria|publisher=Hardie Grant Books|isbn=978-1-74066-188-1}}</ref><ref name="Delaunay-2019" /> Most baby boomers are the children of either the [[Greatest Generation]] or the Silent Generation, and are often parents of [[Millennials]].<ref name="RebeccaLeung">{{cite news|author=Rebecca Leung|date=September 4, 2005|title=The Echo Boomers – 60 Minutes|work=CBS News|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/01/60minutes/main646890.shtml|access-date=August 24, 2010|archive-date=November 4, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131104142419/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/01/60minutes/main646890.shtml|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In [[Western world|the West]], boomers' childhoods in the 1950s and 1960s had significant reforms in education, both as part of the ideological confrontation that was the [[Cold War]],<ref name="Stroke-2013" /><ref name="Knudson-201d" /> and as a continuation of the [[interwar period]].<ref name="Garraty-1991" /><ref name="Gispert" /> Theirs was a time of economic prosperity and rapid technological progress.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> In the 1960s and 1970s, as this relatively large number of young people entered their teens and young adulthood—the oldest turned 18 in 1964—they, and those around them, created a very specific [[rhetoric]] around their cohort,<ref name=Pinker>{{cite book |last=Pinker |first=Steven |year=2011 |title=The Better Angels Of Our Nature |page=109 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-0-141-03464-5}}</ref> and the social movements brought about by their size in numbers, such as the [[counterculture of the 1960s]]<ref name=Owram1997xi>{{cite book | last = Owram | first = Doug | year = 1997 | title = Born at the Right Time | isbn = 978-0-8020-8086-8 | publisher = University of Toronto Press | location = Toronto | page = [https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/ xi] | url = https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/ }}</ref> and its backlash.<ref name="Suri-2009" />

In many countries, this period was one of deep political instability due to the postwar youth bulge.<ref name="Suri-2009" /><ref name="Turchin-2010" /> In China, boomers lived through the [[Cultural Revolution]] and were subject to the [[one-child policy]] as adults.<ref name="Woodruff-2016">{{Cite news|last1=Woodruff|first1=Judy|last2=French|first2=Howard|date=August 1, 2016|title=The unprecedented aging crisis that's about to hit China|work=PBS Newshour|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/unprecedented-aging-crisis-thats-hit-china|url-status=live|access-date=August 13, 2020|archive-date=September 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200926152123/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/unprecedented-aging-crisis-thats-hit-china}}</ref> These social changes and rhetoric had an important impact in the perceptions of the boomers, as well as society's increasingly common tendency to define the world in terms of generations, which was a relatively new phenomenon. This group reached puberty and maximum height earlier than previous generations.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b"/>

In Europe and North America, many boomers came of age in a time of increasing affluence and widespread government subsidies in postwar housing and education,<ref name="Owram1997x">{{cite book |last=Owram |first=Doug |url=https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/ |title=Born at the Right Time |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-8020-8086-8 |location=Toronto |page=[https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/ x]}}</ref> and grew up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time.<ref name="Jones1980">{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Landon |title=Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation |publisher=Coward, McCann and Geoghegan |year=1980 |location=New York}}</ref> Those with higher standards of living and educational levels were often the most demanding of betterment.<ref name="Suri-2009"/><ref name="Hobsbawn-1996"/> In the early 21st century, baby boomers in some developed countries are the single biggest cohort in their societies due to [[sub-replacement fertility]] and population aging.<ref name="Zeihan-2016">{{cite book|last=Zeihan|first=Peter |author-link=Peter Zeihan |title=The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World without America|publisher=Zeihan on Geopolitics|year=2016|isbn=978-0-9985052-0-6|location=Austin, TX|chapter=Chapter 5: The End of the (Old) World}} Population pyramids of the [https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/developed_without_us_2030.jpg developed world without the U.S.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201030194231/https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/developed_without_us_2030.jpg |date=October 30, 2020 }} and of [https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5.3-us-demography-2030.jpg the U.S. in 2030] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201010220715/https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5.3-us-demography-2030.jpg |date=October 10, 2020 }}.</ref> In the United States, they are the second most numerous age demographic after millennials.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/ |title=Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America's largest generation |publisher=Pew Research Center |last=Fry |first=Richard |date=April 28, 2022 |access-date=May 31, 2022 |archive-date=April 28, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200428233813/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Etymology==
The term [[baby boom]] refers to a noticeable increase in the birth rate. The post-World War II population increase was described as a "boom" by various newspaper reporters, including Sylvia F. Porter in a column in the May 4, 1951, edition of the ''[[New York Post]]'', based on the increase of 2,357,000 in the population of the U.S. from 1940 to 1950.<ref>''Reader's Digest''. August 1951, pg. 5.</ref>

The first recorded use of "baby boomer" is in a January 1963 ''[[Daily Press (Virginia)|Daily Press]]'' article by Leslie J. Nason describing a massive surge of college enrollments approaching as the oldest boomers were coming of age.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mentalfloss.com/article/542159/how-generations-named-baby-boomers-generation-x-millennials|title=How Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials Got Their Names|date=May 1, 2018|access-date=September 25, 2018|archive-date=October 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181010015756/http://mentalfloss.com/article/542159/how-generations-named-baby-boomers-generation-x-millennials|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Nason |first1=Leslie J. |title=Baby Boomers, Grown Up, Storm Ivy-Covered Walls |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19690752/daily_press/ |access-date=March 28, 2019 |work=Daily Press |date=January 28, 1963 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328230347/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19690752/daily_press/ |archive-date=March 28, 2019 |location=Newport, Virginia}}</ref> The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' dates the modern meaning of the term to a January 23, 1970, article in ''[[The Washington Post]]''.<ref>{{cite news |title=baby boomer |work=Oxford English Dictionary |date=1974}}</ref>

== Date range and definitions ==
{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| width = 350
| header = 
| image1 = US Birth Rates.svg
| caption1 = United States birth rate (births per 1,000 population per year): The segment for the years 1946 to 1964 is highlighted in red, with birth rates peaking in 1949, dropping steadily around 1958, and reaching prewar Depression-era levels in 1965.<ref name="CDC">{{cite web |url=https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/vsus/vsus_1980_2003.htm |title=Vital Statistics of the United States: 1980–2003 |work=Table 1-1. Live births, birth rates, and fertility rates, by race: United States, 1909–2003 |date=June 6, 2019 |publisher=Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Center for Health Statistics |access-date=December 8, 2019 |archive-date=December 3, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191203090827/https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/vsus/vsus_1980_2003.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>
| image2 =
| caption2 = An uptick occurred in birthrates between the late 1940s and early 1960s when the economy was doing well.
| total_width = 
| alt1 = 
}}

A significant degree of consensus exists around the date range of the baby boomer cohort, with the generation considered to cover those born from 1946 to 1964 by various organizations such as the [[Merriam-Webster]] Online Dictionary,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baby%20boomer|title=Definition of Baby Boomer|dictionary=Merriam-Webster|access-date=April 20, 2020|archive-date=April 17, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200417141302/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baby%20boomer|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Pew Research Center]],<ref>{{cite news|title=Defining generations: Where Millennials end and post-Millennials begin|url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-generations-where-millennials-end-and-post-millennials-begin|access-date=May 8, 2018|publisher=Pew Research Center|date=March 2018|archive-date=May 8, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180508030823/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-generations-where-millennials-end-and-post-millennials-begin/}}</ref> U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sincavage |first1=Jessica |title=The labor force and unemployment:three generations of change |url=https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/06/art2full.pdf |website=U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) |access-date=April 20, 2020 |archive-date=December 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181203213615/https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2004/06/art2full.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Angeles |first1=Domingo |title=Younger baby boomers and number of jobs held |url=https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2016/data-on-display/younger-baby-boomers-and-number-of-jobs-held.htm |website=U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) |access-date=April 20, 2020 |archive-date=April 3, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200403105802/https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2016/data-on-display/younger-baby-boomers-and-number-of-jobs-held.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Federal Reserve Board]],<ref>{{cite news|title=Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989|url=https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:shares|access-date=January 4, 2020|publisher=Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System|date=December 23, 2019|archive-date=January 2, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200102044357/https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:shares|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Australian Bureau of Statistics]],<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/1CD2B1952AFC5E7ACA257298000F2E76?OpenDocument|title=Population by Age and Sex, Australia, States and Territories|date=December 20, 2018|access-date=March 18, 2019|publisher=Australian Bureau of Statistics|archive-date=March 26, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326055924/http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/1CD2B1952AFC5E7ACA257298000F2E76?OpenDocument|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Gallup (company)|Gallup]],<ref>{{cite web |title=This Week on Gallup.com: Looking Once More at Baby Boomers |url=https://news.gallup.com/opinion/queue/181277/week-gallup-com-looking-once-baby-boomers.aspx |website=Gallup |access-date=April 20, 2020 |archive-date=June 14, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200614202007/https://news.gallup.com/opinion/queue/181277/week-gallup-com-looking-once-baby-boomers.aspx |url-status=live }}</ref> [[YouGov]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=YouGov Ratings FAQ|url=https://yougov.co.uk/topics/science/survey-results(popup:ratings/faq)|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210223220625/https://yougov.co.uk/topics/science/survey-results%28popup:ratings/faq%29|archive-date=February 23, 2021|access-date=February 23, 2021|website=yougov.co.uk|language=en-gb}}</ref> and Australia's Social Research Center.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Pennay|first1=Darren|last2=Bongiorno|first2=Frank|date=January 25, 2019|title=Barbeques and black armbands: Australians' attitudes to Australia Day|url=https://www.srcentre.com.au/bbqsandblackarmbands/Barbeques%20and%20black%20armbands%20-%20A%20Life%20in%20Australia%20report%20by%20D%20Pennay%20and%20F%20Bongiorno.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190303212629/https://srcentre.com.au/bbqsandblackarmbands/Barbeques%20and%20black%20armbands%20-%20A%20Life%20in%20Australia%20report%20by%20D%20Pennay%20and%20F%20Bongiorno.pdf|archive-date=March 3, 2019|access-date=March 18, 2019|publisher=Social Research Center}}</ref>  The [[United States Census Bureau]] defines baby boomers as "individuals born in the United States between mid-1946 and mid-1964".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Colby |first1=Sandra L. |last2=Ortman |first2=Jennifer M. |title=The Baby Boom Cohort in the United States: 2012 to 2060 |url=https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1141.pdf |publisher=United States Census Bureau |access-date=March 18, 2019 |date=May 2014 |archive-date=May 6, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190506170405/https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1141.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Bump |first1=Philip |title=Here Is When Each Generation Begins and Ends, According to Facts |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/here-is-when-each-generation-begins-and-ends-according-to-facts/359589/ |access-date=March 18, 2019 |work=The Atlantic |date=March 25, 2014 |archive-date=March 18, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190318040628/https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/here-is-when-each-generation-begins-and-ends-according-to-facts/359589/ |url-status=live }}</ref>  [[Landon Jones]], in his book ''Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation'' (1980), defined the span of the baby-boom generation as extending from 1946 through 1964.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Jones|first1=Landon Y.|date=November 6, 2015|title=How 'baby boomers' took over the world|newspaper=The Washington Post|url=https://www.lannyjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-%E2%80%98baby-boomers%E2%80%99-took-over-the-world-The-Washington-Post.pdf|access-date=March 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328225337/https://www.lannyjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/How-%E2%80%98baby-boomers%E2%80%99-took-over-the-world-The-Washington-Post.pdf|archive-date=March 28, 2019}}</ref>

Others have delimited the baby boom period differently. Authors [[William Strauss]] and [[Neil Howe]], in their 1991 book ''Generations'', define the social generation of boomers as that cohort born from 1943 to 1960, who were too young to have any personal memory of World War II, but old enough to remember the [[History of the United States (1945–1964)|postwar American High]] before [[John F. Kennedy]]'s [[Assassination of John F. Kennedy|assassination]].<ref>{{Cite book |first1=Neil |last1=Howe |first2=William |last2=Strauss |title=Generations: The History of Americas Future, 1584 to 2069 |year=1991 |publisher=William Morrow |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/generationshisto00stra_0/page/299 299–316] |isbn=978-0-688-11912-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/generationshisto00stra_0/page/299 }}</ref>

[[David Foot]], author of ''Boom, Bust and Echo: Profiting from the Demographic Shift in the 21st&nbsp;Century'' (1997), defined a Canadian boomer as someone born from 1947 to 1966, the years in which more than 400,000 babies were born. He acknowledges, though, that this is a demographic definition, and that culturally, it may not be as clear-cut.<ref>{{cite news|author=Canada |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060623.dates24/BNStory/BabyBoomers/home |title=By definition: Boom, bust, X and why |work=The Globe and Mail |date=June 24, 2006 |access-date=August 27, 2010 |location=Toronto |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090520180757/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060623.dates24/BNStory/BabyBoomers/home |archive-date=May 20, 2009 }}</ref> Doug Owram argues that the Canadian boom took place from 1946 to 1962, but that culturally, boomers everywhere were born between the late war years and about 1955 or 1956. Those born in the 1960s might feel disconnected from the cultural identifiers of the earlier boomers.<ref name="Owram1997xiv">{{cite book| last = Owram| first = Doug| year = 1997| title = Born at the Right Time| isbn = 978-0-8020-8086-8| publisher = University of Toronto Press| location = Toronto| page = [https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/ xiv]| url = https://archive.org/details/bornatrighttimeh0000owra/page/}}</ref>

French sociologist [[Michèle Delaunay]] in her book ''Le Fabuleux Destin des Baby-Boomers'' (2019), places the baby-boom generation in France between 1946 and 1973, and in Spain between 1958 and 1975.<ref name="Delaunay-2019">{{Cite book|last=Delaunay, Michèle [VNV]|title=Le fabuleux destin des baby-boomers|year=2019|isbn=978-2-259-28062-4|location=Paris|oclc=1134671847}}</ref> Another French academic, Jean-François Sirinelli, in an earlier study, ''Les Baby-Boomers: Une génération 1945-1969'' (2007) denotes the generation span between 1945 and 1969.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jean-François|first=Sirinelli|title=Les Baby-Boomers: Une génération 1945-1969|publisher=Hachette Littératures|year=2007|isbn=978-2-01-279371-2|location=France|language=French}}</ref>
[[File:UH-1D helicopters in Vietnam 1966.jpg|thumb|Baby boomers are sometimes referred to as the "Vietnam generation" due to the significance of the War in Vietnam. In the United States, roughly 1 in 10 baby boomer men served in the [[United States Armed Forces|U.S. Armed Forces]]. Some of them were deployed to Vietnam.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wright |first=James |date=April 11, 2017 |title=Opinion {{!}} The Baby Boomer War |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/the-baby-boomer-war.html |website=The New York Times}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Barrett |first=Claire |date=October 17, 2017 |title=A Generation Goes to War |url=https://www.historynet.com/generation-goes-war/ |access-date=February 3, 2024 |website=HistoryNet |language=en-US}}</ref>]]
The [[Office for National Statistics]] has described the UK as having had two baby booms in the middle of the 20th century, one in the years immediately after World War II and one  around the 1960s with a noticeably lower birth rate (but still significantly higher than that seen in the 1930s or later in the '70s) during part of the 1950s.<ref>{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=March 27, 2020|title=Our population – Where are we? How did we get here? Where are we going? - Office for National Statistics|url=https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ourpopulationwherearewehowdidwegetherewherearewegoing/2020-03-27#births-and-deaths-since-1901|access-date=February 23, 2021|website=www.ons.gov.uk|archive-date=November 18, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211118184424/https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ourpopulationwherearewehowdidwegetherewherearewegoing/2020-03-27#births-and-deaths-since-1901|url-status=live}}</ref>  [[Bernard Salt]] places the Australian baby boom between 1946 and 1961.<ref name="Salt2004" /><ref>{{cite web|last1=Salt|first1=Bernard|date=November 2003|title=The Big Shift|url=http://clrc.gov.au/agd/EMA/rwpattach.nsf/viewasattachmentpersonal/(C86520E41F5EA5C8AAB6E66B851038D8)~1103BookreviewNotesfield.pdf/$file/1103BookreviewNotesfield.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305125344/http://clrc.gov.au/agd/EMA/rwpattach.nsf/viewasattachmentpersonal/%28C86520E41F5EA5C8AAB6E66B851038D8%29~1103BookreviewNotesfield.pdf/%24file/1103BookreviewNotesfield.pdf|archive-date=March 5, 2009|access-date=March 28, 2019|website=The Australian Journal of Emergency Management}}</ref>

In the US, the generation can be segmented into two broadly defined cohorts: the "leading-edge baby boomers" are individuals born between 1946 and 1955, those who came of age during the [[Vietnam War]] and Civil Rights eras.<ref name="Bell">{{Cite encyclopedia|last=Bell|first=Kenton|date=October 8, 2013|entry=baby boomer definition|dictionary=Open Education Sociology Dictionary|entry-url=https://sociologydictionary.org/baby-boomer/|language=en-US|title=Baby boomer definition &#124; Open Education Sociology Dictionary|access-date=June 11, 2021|archive-date=June 10, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210610062158/https://sociologydictionary.org/baby-boomer/|url-status=live}}</ref> This group represents slightly more than half of the generation, or roughly 38,002,000 people. The other half of the generation, usually called "[[Generation Jones]]", but sometimes also called names like the "late boomers" or "trailing-edge baby boomers", was born between 1956 and 1964, and came of age after Vietnam and the [[Watergate scandal]].<ref name="Bell"/><ref>{{Cite web|last=Fleming|first=John|date=January 30, 2015|title=Baby Boomers Are Opening Their Wallets|url=https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/181367/baby-boomers-opening-wallets.aspx|access-date=June 10, 2021|website=Gallup.com|language=en|archive-date=June 10, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210610062149/https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/181367/baby-boomers-opening-wallets.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Original Generation X, 1954–63 |url=http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/01/generation_x.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200303165113/http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2008/01/generation_x.html |archive-date=March 3, 2020 |access-date=July 31, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Baby Boomers Are Different Than Generation Jones – We're Proud Of Being Old |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/bartastor/2018/07/30/baby-boomers-are-different-than-generation-jones-were-proud-of-being-old/#28c28dbb2b2a |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200715083401/https://www.forbes.com/sites/bartastor/2018/07/30/baby-boomers-are-different-than-generation-jones-were-proud-of-being-old/#28c28dbb2b2a |archive-date=July 15, 2020 |access-date=July 31, 2020 |website=[[Forbes]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=May 28, 2020 |title=How to tell if you're part of 'Generation Jones' |url=https://www.considerable.com/life/people/generation-jones-group-boomers-gen-x/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819070635/https://www.considerable.com/life/people/generation-jones-group-boomers-gen-x/ |archive-date=August 19, 2020 |access-date=July 31, 2020}}</ref> This second cohort includes about 37,818,000 people.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Brent |last=Green |title=Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices, Predictions |year=2006 |publisher=Paramount Market Publishing |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/marketingtoleadi0000gree_a7w2/page/4 4–5] |isbn=978-0-9766973-5-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/marketingtoleadi0000gree_a7w2/page/4 }}</ref> Others use the term Generation Jones to refer to a [[cusp generation]], which includes those born in the latter half of the Baby Boomers to the early years of Generation X, with a typical range of 1954 to 1965.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/Generation-Jones/145569|title=Not My Generation|last=Williams|first=Jeffrey J.|date=March 31, 2014|website=The Chronicle of Higher Education|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171009033716/https://www.chronicle.com/article/Generation-Jones/145569|archive-date=October 9, 2017|access-date=January 27, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/archives/display_detail.htm?StoryID=91159 |title=Seniors moving forward in reverse |newspaper=The Frederick News-Post |author=Adam Avery |date=December 19, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090206110817/http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/archives/display_detail.htm?StoryID=91159|archive-date=February 6, 2009|access-date=August 2, 2010}}</ref><ref name="AP080111">{{Cite web|date=January 25, 2009|title=In Obama, many see an end to the baby boomer era :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: 44: Barack Obama|url=http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1372376,w-obama-baby-boomer-era-011109.article|access-date=December 31, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090125183857/http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1372376,w-obama-baby-boomer-era-011109.article |archive-date=January 25, 2009 }}</ref>
{{Clear}}

== Demographics ==
=== Asia ===
{{Hatnote|See also: [[Aging of China]], [[Aging of Japan|of Japan]], and [[Aging of South Korea|of South Korea]]}}<gallery mode="packed" heights="209" caption="Population pyramids of China, Japan, and South Korea in 2018">
File:China population pyramid (2018).jpg
File:Japan population pyramid (2018).jpg
File:South Korea population pyramid (2018).jpg
</gallery> During the time of the Great Leap Forward, the [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP) encouraged couples to have as many children as possible because it believed a growing labor force was needed for national development along socialist lines.<ref name="Nectar-2021" /> China's baby-boom cohort is the largest in the world. According to journalist and photographer Howard French, who spent many years in China, many Chinese neighborhoods were, by the mid-2010s, disproportionately filled with the elderly, to whom the Chinese themselves referred as a "lost generation", who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when higher education was discouraged and large numbers of people were sent to the countryside for political reasons. As China's baby boomers retire in the late-2010s and onward, the people replacing in the workforce will be a much smaller cohort due to the one-child policy. Consequently, China's central government faces a stark economic trade-off between "cane and butter"—how much to spend on social welfare programs such as state pensions to support the elderly and how much to spend in the military to achieve the nation's geopolitical objectives.<ref name="Woodruff-2016" />

According to the [[National Development Council (Taiwan)|National Development Council of Taiwan]], the nation's population could start shrinking by 2022 and the number of people of working age could fall 10% by 2027. About half of Taiwanese would be aged 50 or over by 2034.<ref name="Hsu-2018">{{Cite news|last=Hsu|first=Crystal|date=August 31, 2018|title=Population decline might start sooner than forecast|work=Taipei Times|url=http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/08/31/2003699509|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101022704/http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/08/31/2003699509}}</ref> At the current rate, Taiwan is set to transition from an aged to super-aged society, where 21% of the population is over 65 years of age, in eight years, compared to seven years for Singapore, eight years for South Korea, 11 years for Japan, 14 for the United States, 29 for France, and 51 for the United Kingdom.<ref name="Liao-2018">{{Cite news|last=Liao|first=George|date=April 10, 2018|title=MOI: Taiwan officially becomes an aged society with people over 65 years old breaking the 14% mark|work=Taiwan News|department=Society|url=https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3402395|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101213604/https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3402395}}</ref>

Japan at present has one of the oldest populations in the world and persistently subreplacement fertility, currently 1.4 per woman. Japan's population peaked in 2017. Forecasts suggest that the elderly will make up 35% of Japan's population by 2040.<ref name="BBC News-2020">{{Cite news|date=July 16, 2020|title=Seven countries with big (and small) population problems|work=BBC News|department=World|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53424726|url-status=live|access-date=August 24, 2020|archive-date=August 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801050016/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53424726}}</ref> As of 2018, Japan was already a super-aged society,<ref name="Steger-2018">{{Cite news|last=Steger|first=Isabella|date=August 31, 2018|title=Taiwan's population could start shrinking in four years|work=Quartz|url=https://qz.com/1375403/taiwans-population-could-start-shrinking-by-2022/|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=January 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101213549/https://qz.com/1375403/taiwans-population-could-start-shrinking-by-2022/}}</ref> with 27% of its people being older than 65 years.<ref name="Duarte-2018">{{Cite news|last=Duarte|first=Fernando|date=April 8, 2018|title=Why the world now has more grandparents than grandchildren|work=BBC News|department=Generation Project|url=https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190405-why-the-world-now-has-more-grandparents-than-grandchildren|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2020|archive-date=December 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191222123013/https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190405-why-the-world-now-has-more-grandparents-than-grandchildren}}</ref> According to government data, Japan's total fertility rate was 1.43 in 2017.<ref name="Japan Times-2019">{{Cite news|date=May 10, 2019|title=Japan enacts legislation making preschool education free in effort to boost low fertility rate|work=Japan Times|department=National|url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/10/national/japan-enacts-legislation-making-preschool-education-free-effort-boost-low-fertility-rate/|url-status=live|access-date=January 1, 2010|archive-date=May 10, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190510102655/https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/10/national/japan-enacts-legislation-making-preschool-education-free-effort-boost-low-fertility-rate/}}</ref> According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, with a median age of 47 years in 2017.<ref name="Desjardins-2019">{{Cite web|last=Desjardins|first=Jeff|date=April 18, 2019|title=Median Age of the Population in Every Country|url=https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-of-the-population-in-every-country/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200722234817/https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-age-of-the-population-in-every-country/|archive-date=July 22, 2020|website=Visual Capitalist}}</ref>

A baby boom occurred in the aftermath of the Korean War, and the government subsequently encouraged people to have no more than two children per couple. Although South Korean fertility remained above replacement well in to the 1970s,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Haub |first1=Carl |title=Did South Korea's Population Policy Work Too Well? |url=https://www.prb.org/resources/did-south-koreas-population-policy-work-too-well/ |website=PRB}}</ref> its fertility has since been declining due to declining economic prospects for young people, and women's liberation. In recent times, the South Korean government has since made many efforts to increase the national fertility rate through subsidies; however, these efforts have failed, and South Korea retains one of the world's lowest fertility rates, with a [[total fertility rate]] of less than 1 child per woman.<ref name="Haas-2018">{{Cite news|last=Haas|first=Benjamin|date=September 3, 2018|title=South Korea's fertility rate set to hit record low of 0.96|work=The Guardian|department=South Korea|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low|url-status=live|access-date=February 8, 2020|archive-date=April 25, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200425184629/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/south-koreas-fertility-rate-set-to-hit-record-low}}</ref>

===Europe===
{{See also|Aging of Europe}}
<gallery mode="packed" heights="300">
File:Europe population over 65 in 2018.svg|European countries by proportions of people aged 65 and over in 2018
File:Population pyramid of the European Union 2016.png|Population pyramid of the European Union in 2016
</gallery>From about 1750 to 1950, Western Europe transitioned from having both high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. By the late 1960s or 1970s, the average woman had fewer than two children, and although demographers at first expected a "correction", such a rebound never came. Despite a bump in the total fertility rates of some European countries in the very late 20th century (the 1980s and 1990s), especially France and Scandinavia, they never returned to replacement level; the bump was largely due to older women realizing their dreams of motherhood. Member states of the [[European Economic Community]] saw a steady increase in not just divorce and out-of-wedlock births between 1960 and 1985 but also falling fertility rates. In 1981, a survey of countries across the industrialized world found that while more than half of people aged 65 and over thought that women needed children to be fulfilled, only 35% of those between the ages of 15 and 24 (younger baby boomers and older generation Xers) agreed. Falling fertility was due to urbanization and decreased infant mortality rates, which diminished the benefits and increased the costs of raising children. In other words,  investing more in fewer children became more economically sensible, as economist [[Gary Becker]] argued. (This is the first demographic transition.) By the 1960s, people began moving from traditional and communal values towards more expressive and individualistic outlooks due to access to and aspiration of higher education, and to the spread of lifestyle values once practiced only by a tiny minority of cultural elites. (This is the [[Demographic transition#Second demographic transition|second demographic transition]].)<ref name="Kaufmann-2013">{{Cite book|last=Kaufmann|first=Eric|title=Whither the Child? Causes and Consequences of Low Fertility|publisher=Paradigm Publishers|year=2013|isbn=978-1-61205-093-5|editor-last=Kaufmann|editor-first=Eric|location=Boulder, Colorado, United States|pages=135–56|chapter=Chapter 7: Sacralization by Stealth? The Religious Consequences of Low Fertility in Europe|editor-last2=Wilcox|editor-first2=W. Bradford}}</ref>

At the start of the 21st century, Europe has an [[Population ageing|aging population]]. This problem is especially acute in Eastern Europe, whereas in Western Europe, it is alleviated by international immigration.<ref name="Kaufmann-2010">{{Cite journal|last=Kaufmann|first=Eric|author-link=Eric Kaufmann|date=Winter 2010|title=Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?|journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review|volume=99|issue=396, the future of religion|pages=387–94|jstor=27896504}}</ref> Researches by  demographers and political scientists [[Eric Kaufmann]], [[Roger Eatwell]], and [[Matthew Goodwin]] suggest that such immigration-induced ethnodemographic change is one of the key reasons behind public backlash in the form of [[Right-wing populism|national populism]] across the rich liberal democracies, an example of which is the [[2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum]] (Brexit).<ref name="The Economist-2018">{{Cite news|date=November 3, 2018|title=Two new books explain the Brexit revolt|newspaper=The Economist|department=Britain|url=https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/11/03/two-new-books-explain-the-brexit-revolt|access-date=December 21, 2019|archive-date=February 16, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200216201709/https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/11/03/two-new-books-explain-the-brexit-revolt|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2018, 19.70% of the population of the European Union (EU)  were 65 or older.<ref name="Duarte-2018"/> The median age was 43 in 2019, and was about 29 in the 1950s. Europe had significant population growth in the late 20th century. However, Europe's growth is projected to halt by the early 2020s due to falling fertility rates and an aging population. In 2015, a woman living in the EU had on average 1.5 children, down from 2.6 in 1960. Although the EU continues to experience a net influx of immigrants, this is not enough to balance out the low fertility rates.<ref name="Barry-2019">{{Cite news|last=Barry|first=Sinead|date=June 19, 2019|title=Fertility rate drop will see EU population shrink 13% by year 2100; active graphic|work=Euronews|department=World|url=https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/18/watch-changes-in-eu-populations-over-the-past-70-years|url-status=live|access-date=January 20, 2020|archive-date=May 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200505042631/https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/18/watch-changes-in-eu-populations-over-the-past-70-years}}</ref> In 2017, the median age was 53.1 years in Monaco, 45 in Germany and Italy, and 43 in Greece, Bulgaria, and Portugal, making them some of the oldest countries in the world besides Japan and Bermuda. They are followed by Austria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Spain, whose median age was 43.<ref name="Desjardins-2019"/>

===North America===
{{See also|Aging of the United States}}<gallery mode="packed" heights="220" caption="Population pyramids of Canada and the United States">
File:Canada population pyramid (2018).jpg
File:US population pyramid (2018).jpg
</gallery>By the mid-2010s, sub-replacement fertility and growing life expectancy meant that Canada had an aging population.<ref name="Fraser-2015">{{Cite news|last=Fraser|first=Lara|date=September 30, 2015|title=Models of aging: How Japan, Denmark, Germany are riding out their senior wave|work=CBC News|department=Canada|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/models-of-aging-how-japan-denmark-germany-are-riding-out-their-senior-wave-1.3249123|url-status=live|access-date=August 24, 2020|archive-date=November 20, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191120103244/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/models-of-aging-how-japan-denmark-germany-are-riding-out-their-senior-wave-1.3249123}}</ref> Statistics Canada reported in 2015 that for the first time in Canadian history,  more people were aged 65 and over than people below the age of 15. One in six Canadians was above the age of 65 in July 2015.<ref>{{Cite news|date=September 29, 2015|title=More Canadians are 65 and over than under age 15, StatsCan says|work=CBC News|department=Business|url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/statistics-canada-seniors-1.3248295|url-status=live|access-date=August 24, 2020|archive-date=August 12, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200812062043/https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/statistics-canada-seniors-1.3248295}}</ref> Projections by Statistics Canada suggest this gap will only increase in the next 40 years. Economist and demographer David Foot from the University of Toronto told CBC that policymakers have ignored this trend for decades. With the massive baby-boom generation entering retirement, economic growth will be slower and demand for social support will rise. This will significantly alter the Canadian economy. Nevertheless, Canada remained the second-youngest G7 nation, as of 2015.<ref name="Fraser-2015" />
[[File:US living adult generations.png|center|thumb|708px|U.S. adult demographic cohorts in 2019]]
Historically, the early Anglo-Protestant settlers in the 17th century were the most successful group, culturally, militarily, economically, and politically, and they maintained their dominance until the early 20th century. Commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment meant that they sought to assimilate newcomers from outside of the [[British Isles]], but few were interested in adopting a pan-European identity for the nation, much less turning it into a global melting pot, but in the early 1900s, liberal progressives and modernists began promoting more inclusive ideals for what the national identity of the United States should be. While the more traditionalist segments of society continued to maintain their Anglo-Protestant ethnocultural traditions, universalism and cosmopolitanism started gaining favor among the elites. These ideals became institutionalized after the Second World War, and ethnic minorities started moving towards institutional parity with the once-dominant Anglo-Protestants.<ref name="Varzally-2005">{{Cite journal|last=Varzally|first=Allison|date=2005|title=Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America|url=https://www.sneps.net/research-interests/the-rise-and-fall-of-anglo-america-the-decline-of-dominant-ethnicity-in-the-united-states/the-rise-and-fall-of-anglo-america-review|journal=The Journal of American History|volume=92|issue=2|pages=680–681|doi=10.2307/3659399|jstor=3659399|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200804010152/https://www.sneps.net/research-interests/the-rise-and-fall-of-anglo-america-the-decline-of-dominant-ethnicity-in-the-united-states/the-rise-and-fall-of-anglo-america-review|access-date=August 2, 2020|archive-date=August 4, 2020|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965]] (also known as the Hart–Celler Act), passed at the urging of President Lyndon B. Johnson, abolished national quotas for immigrants, and replaced it with a system that admits a fixed number of persons per year based in qualities such as skills and the need for refuge. Immigration subsequently surged from elsewhere in North America (especially Canada and Mexico), Asia, Central America, and the West Indies.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins Publishers|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|pages=857–8|chapter=Chapter XXXI: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times}}</ref> By the mid-1980s, most immigrants originated from Asia and Latin America. Some were refugees from Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and other parts of the Americas, while others came illegally by crossing the long and largely undefended U.S.-Mexican border. Although Congress offered amnesty to "undocumented immigrants" who had been in the country for a long time and attempted to penalize employers who recruited them, their influx continued. At the same time, the postwar baby boom and subsequently falling fertility rate seemed to jeopardize America's Social Security system as the baby boomers retire in the early 21st century.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|pages=932–3|chapter=Chapter XXXIII: Our Times}}</ref>

Using their own definition of baby boomers as people born between 1946 and 1964 and U.S. census data, the Pew Research Center estimated  71.6 million boomers were in the United States as of 2019.<ref name="2020Overtake">{{Cite web|last=Fry|first=Richard|date=April 28, 2020|title=Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America's largest generation|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200428233813/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/|archive-date=April 28, 2020|access-date=April 28, 2020|website=Pew Research Center}}</ref> The age wave theory suggests an [[economic slowdown]] when the boomers started retiring during 2007–2009.<ref>{{Cite news|date=January 31, 2008|title=Economy faces bigger bust without Boomers|language=en|work=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-boomers-idUSN3131412220080131|access-date=December 31, 2022|archive-date=December 31, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221231025902/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-boomers-idUSN3131412220080131|url-status=live}}</ref>  In 2018, though, 29% of people aged 65–72 in the United States remained active in the labor force, according to the Pew Research Center. This trend follows from the general expectation of Americans to work after the age of 65. The baby boomers who chose to remain in the work force after the age of 65 tended to be university graduates, whites, and residents of the big cities. That the boomers maintained a relatively high labor participation rate made economic sense because the longer they postpone retirement, the more Social Security benefits they could claim, once they finally retire.<ref name="Fry-2019" />

== As adolescents and young adults ==

=== Standards of living and economic prospects ===
{{multiple image
| align = left
| direction = vertical
| width = 250
| header = 
| image1 = Spelende kinderen - Children playing with toys (6437678745).jpg
| caption1 = Two Dutch children playing with toys (1958): The 1950s and 1960s were an economically prosperous time in the West.
| image2 =The Ladies' home journal (1948) (14765206281).jpg
| caption2 = A household refrigerator ([[Frigidaire]]) drawn for the [[Ladies' Home Journal]] (1948)
| image3 = '68 VW 1500.jpg
| caption3 = About 21 million [[Volkswagen Beetle]]s were sold, and they are a generational icon of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{cite news|date=June 6, 2003|title=End of the road for the Beetle|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2969734.stm|access-date=October 10, 2020|archive-date=August 6, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070806043625/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2969734.stm|url-status=live}}</ref>
| image4 = Factory Hand at Ford 10,Phtograh Taken by Jun Miki,1954.jpg
| caption4 = An automotive factory worker with his family, car, and home in 1954
| total_width = 
}}
After the Second World War, the United States offered massive financial assistance to Western European nations in the form of the [[Marshall Plan]] to rebuild themselves and to extend U.S. economic and political influence. The Soviet Union did the same for Eastern Europe with the [[Comecon|Council for Mutual Economic Assistance]]. Western Europe had considerable economic growth, due to both the Marshall Plan and initiatives aimed at European integration, starting with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in 1951 and the European Community in 1957–58.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=424–5}}</ref><ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> As a matter of fact, the Anglo-Americans spoke of the 'Golden Age' and French of '30 glorious years' (''les trente glorieuses'') continued economic growth. For the United States, the postwar economic expansion was a continuation of what had occurred during the war, but for Western Europe and Japan, the primary economic goal was to return to prewar levels of productivity and prosperity, and many managed to close the gap with the United States in productivity per work hour and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Full employment was reached on both sides of the Atlantic by the 1960s. In Western Europe, the average unemployment figure stood at 1.5% at that time. The [[Car|automobile]], already a common sight in North America, became so in Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe and Latin America. At the same time, governments around the world undertook the construction or expansion of [[public transport]]ation networks at a rate never before seen.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

Many items previously deemed luxurious, such as the [[Washing machine|laundry machine]], the [[dishwasher]], the [[refrigerator]], and the [[telephone]], entered mass production for the average consumer. The average person could live like the upper class in the previous generation. Technological advances made before, during, and after the war, such as plastics, television,  [[magnetic tape]], [[transistor]]s, [[integrated circuit]]s, and [[laser]]s, played a key role in the tremendous improvements in the standards of living for the average citizen in the developed world.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /><ref name="Kakalios-2010">{{Cite book |last=Kakalios |first=James |title=The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A Math-free Exploration of the Science that Made Our World |publisher=Gotham Books |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-592-40479-7 |location=New York |chapter=Afterword: Journey into Mystery |author-link=James Kakalios}}</ref> This was a time of optimism, economic prosperity, and a growing middle class.<ref name="Twenge-2023a">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 2: Silents}}</ref> In some instances, the rate of technological change was so rapid even when compared to optimistic projections, so much so that some social theorists of the day warned of boredom for the [[housewife]].<ref name="Kakalios-2010" /> In reality, it paved the way for a more individualistic culture and women's emancipation, something the Baby Boomers would push for when they came of age during the late 1960s and 1970s. It was also one of the reasons why the baby boom lasted for as long as it did; housekeeping and child-rearing became less onerous for women.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> Nevertheless, after 1945, because [[Child labour|child labor]] had been virtually eradicated in the West, married women from families of modest means had to join the work force.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> As [[Louise A. Tilly|Louise Tilly]] and [[Joan Wallach Scott|Joan Scott]] explain, "in the past children had worked so that their mothers could remain at home fulfilling domestic and reproductive responsibilities. Now when families needed additional income, mothers worked instead of children."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Tilly |first1=Louise |title=Women Work & Family |last2=Scott |first2=Joan |publisher=Rutledge |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-415-90262-5 |location=London |pages=219}}</ref>

Demand for housing exploded. Governments both in the East and the West massively subsidized housing with many [[public housing]] projects in urban areas in the form of high-rise apartment buildings. In many cases, this came at the cost of destroying historical sites.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> As standards of living continued to climb, decentralization took root, and [[suburb]]an communities began developing their own entertainment quarters and [[shopping mall]]s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Public health improved, too, with vaccination programs playing an important role. In the United Kingdom, for example, the introduction of vaccines against [[poliomyelitis]], [[measles]], and [[Whooping cough|pertussis]] (whooping cough) in the 1950s and 1960s caused infection rates to plummet, albeit with some upticks due to [[vaccine hesitancy]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pollard |first1=Andrew J. |last2=Bijker |first2=Else M. |date=December 22, 2020 |title=A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments |journal=Nature Reviews Immunology |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=83–100|doi=10.1038/s41577-020-00479-7 |pmid=33353987 |pmc=7754704 }}</ref> In the United States, vaccination against measles resulted in not only falling childhood mortality rates but also other positive life outcomes such as rising family income.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chuard |first1=Caroline |last2=Schwandt |first2=Hannes |last3=Becker |first3=Alexander D. |last4=Haraguchi |first4=Masahiko |date=July 2022 |title=Economic vs. Epidemiological Approaches to Measuring the Human Capital Impacts of Infectious Disease Elimination |url=http://www.nber.org/papers/w30202 |journal=NBER Working Papers |series=Working Paper Series |publisher=National Bureau of Economic Research |issue=30202|doi=10.3386/w30202 }}</ref> In the West, average life expectancy increased by about seven years between the 1930s and 1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

Prosperity was taken for granted. Indeed, for many young people who came of age after 1945, the interwar experience of mass unemployment and stable or falling prices was confined to the history books. Full employment and inflation were the norm.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1995|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Nine: The Golden Years|author-link=Eric Hobsbawm}}</ref> The new-found wealth allowed many Western governments to finance generous welfare programs. By the 1970s, all industrialized capitalist nations had become welfare states. Six of them—Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, West Germany, and Italy—spent more than 60% of their national budgets on welfare. When the 'Golden Age' came to an end, such government largess proved problematic.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />

In fact, the 'Golden Age' finally petered out in the 1970s,<ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> as automation started eating away jobs at the low to medium skill levels,<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> and as the first waves of people born after the Second World War entered the workplace en masse.<ref name="Macunovich-2015">{{Cite news|last=Macunovich|first=Diane J.|date=September 8, 2015|title=Baby booms and busts: how population growth spurts affect the economy|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/baby-booms-and-busts-how-population-growth-spurts-affect-the-economy-46056|access-date=November 14, 2020|archive-date=November 14, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114162256/https://theconversation.com/baby-booms-and-busts-how-population-growth-spurts-affect-the-economy-46056|url-status=live}}</ref> In the United States, at least, the onset of a recession—as defined by the [[National Bureau of Economic Research]]—typically occurred within a few years of a peak in the rate of change of the young-adult population, both positive and negative, and indeed, the recession of the early 1970s took place shortly after the growth of people in their early 20s peaked in the late 1960s.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" /> Western capitalist nations slid into recessions during the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. Although the collective GDP of these nations continued to grow until the early 1990s, so much so that they became much wealthier and more productive by that date, unemployment, especially youth unemployment, exploded in many industrialized countries. In the European Community, the average unemployment rate stood at 9.2% by the late 1980s, despite the deceleration of population growth. Youth unemployment during the 1980s was over 20% in the United Kingdom, more than 40% in Spain, and around 46% in Norway. Generous welfare programs alleviated the potential of social unrest, though Western governments found themselves squeezed by a combination of falling tax revenue and high state spending.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996c">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Fourteen: The Crisis Decades}}</ref> People born during the baby bust due to the Great Depression in the 1930s found themselves in an abundance of employment opportunities as they entered the workforce in the 1950s. In fact, they could expect to achieve parity with their fathers' wages at the entrance level. This, however, was not the case for the postwar generation. By the mid-1980s, people could only expect to make a third of what their fathers made as new entrants to the labor force.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" />

The pace of economic growth in the 1960s was understood to be unprecedented. In the long-term view, though, it was just another upswing in the [[Kondratiev wave|Kondratiev cycle]] (see figure), much like the mid-[[Victorian era|Victorian]] boom or the ''[[Belle Époque]]'' from around 1850 to 1873 in Britain and France, respectively. Globally, agricultural output doubled between the early 1950s and early 1980s—more than that in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia—while the fishing industry tripled its catches.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" />[[File:Kondratieff Wave-HQ.png|thumb|440x440px|Schematic diagram of the Kondratiev wave|right]]Communist nations, especially the Soviet Union and the Eastern European states, grew considerably, too. Heretofore agrarian states such as Bulgaria and Romania began to industrialize. By the 1960s, though, the growth of the communist states faltered compared to the capitalist industrialized countries.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> By the 1980s, the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe became stagnant. This was, however, not the case in the newly industrializing economies such as China or South Korea, whose process of industrialization began much later, nor was it in Japan.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996c" />

The developing world achieved significant growth during the 1950s and 1960s, though it never quite reached the level of affluence of industrialized societies. The populations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America boomed between 1950 and 1975. Food production comfortably outpaced population growth. As a consequence, this period saw no major famines other than cases due to armed conflict and politics, which did happen in Communist China.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1995" /> People who experienced the [[Great Chinese Famine|Great Famine of China]] (1958–1961) as toddlers were noticeably shorter than those who did not. The Great Famine killed up to 30 million people and massively reduced China's economic output.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Gray|first=Richard|date=March 20, 2019|title=What happens when we run out of food?|url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190319-what-happens-when-the-food-runs-out|access-date=October 1, 2020|website=BBC Future|archive-date=September 24, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200924011716/https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190319-what-happens-when-the-food-runs-out|url-status=live}}</ref> But before the Famine, China's agricultural output increased 70% from the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 to 1956, according to official statistics. Chairman [[Mao Zedong]] introduced a plan for the rapid industrialization of his country, the [[Great Leap Forward]]. Steel production, mainly from flimsy household furnaces, tripled between 1958 and 1960, but fell to a level lower than that at the start of the Great Leap Forward by 1962. Rural life—China was a predominantly rural society at this point in history—including family affairs, was collectivized. Women were recruited to the workplace, that is, the fields, while the government provided them with nursery and childcare services. In general, monetary income was replaced by six basic services: food, healthcare, education, haircuts, funerals, and movies. Mao's plan was quickly abandoned, not just because it failed, but also because of the Great Famine. Yet despite the disastrous results of [[Maoism|Maoist]] policies, by the standards of the developing world, China was not doing so poorly. By the mid-1970s, China's food consumption measured in calories was just above the global median and the nation's life expectancy grew steadily, interrupted only by the famine years.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d">{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Sixteen: End of Socialism}}</ref>

Between 1960 and 1975, the Chinese mainland's growth was fast, but lagged behind the [[Japanese economic miracle|growth of Japan]] and the rise of the [[Four Asian Tigers]] ([[South Korea]], [[Taiwan]], [[Hong Kong]], and [[Singapore]]) grew even faster.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

{{Clear}}

=== Education ===
Universal literacy was a major goal for practically all governments in the developing world and many made significant progress towards this end, even if their 'official' statistics were questionably optimistic.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996">{{Cite book |last=Hobsbawm |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Hobsbawm |title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 |publisher=Abacus |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-349-10671-7 |chapter=Chapter Ten: Social Revolution 1945-1990}}</ref> In the 1980s, [[James Flynn (academic)|James R. Flynn]] examined psychometric data and discovered evidence that the [[IQ score]]s of Americans were increasing significantly between the early 1930s and late 1970s. On average, younger cohorts scored higher than their elders. This was confirmed by later studies and on data in other countries; the discovery became known as the [[Flynn effect]].<ref name="baker">{{Cite journal |last1=Baker |first1=David P. |last2=Eslinger |first2=Paul J. |last3=Benavides |first3=Martin |last4=Peters |first4=Ellen |last5=Dieckmann |first5=Nathan F. |last6=Leon |first6=Juan |date=March 2015 |title=The cognitive impact of the education revolution: A possible cause of the Flynn Effect on population IQ |journal=Intelligence |volume=49 |pages=144–58 |doi=10.1016/j.intell.2015.01.003 |issn=0160-2896}}</ref>[[File:Bourbaki congress1938.png|left|thumb|The Bourbaki school greatly influenced mathematics research and education in the postwar era.]]During the postwar era, the importance of modern mathematics—especially mathematical logic, optimization, and numerical analysis—was acknowledged for its usefulness during the war. From this sprang proposals for reforms in mathematics education. The international movement to bring about such reforms was launched in the late 1950s, with heavy French influence. In France, they also grew out of a desire to bring the subject as it was taught in schools closer to the research done by pure mathematicians, particularly the [[Nicolas Bourbaki|Nicholas Bourbaki]] school, which emphasized an austere and abstract style of doing mathematics, [[Axiomatic system|axiomatization]].<ref group="note">Thus instead of the intuitive approach which often necessitates the memorization of rules and formulas for problem-solving, one begins with definitions and axioms then derives theorems from them. Concrete calculations are de-emphasized in favor of abstract proofs.</ref> Up until the 1950s, the purpose of primary education was to prepare students for life and future careers. This changed in the 1960s. A commission headed by [[André Lichnerowicz]] was established to work out the details of the desired reforms in mathematics education. At the same time, the French government mandated that the same courses be taught to all schoolchildren, regardless of their career prospects and aspirations. Thus the same highly abstract courses in mathematics were taught to not just those willing and able to pursue university studies but also those who left school early to join the workforce. From elementary school to the [[Baccalauréat|French Baccalaureate]], [[Euclidean geometry]] and [[calculus]] were de-emphasized in favor of [[set theory]] and [[abstract algebra]]. This conception of mass public education was inherited from the interwar period and was taken for granted; the model for the elites was to be applied to all segments of society. But by the early 1970s, the Commission ran into problems. Mathematicians, physicists, members of professional societies, economists, and industrial leaders criticized the reforms as being suitable for neither schoolteachers nor students. Many teachers were ill-prepared and ill-equipped. One member of the Lichnerowicz Commission asked, "Should we teach outdated mathematics to less intelligent children?" Lichnerowicz resigned and the commission was disbanded in 1973.<ref name="Gispert">{{Cite web|last=Gispert|first=Hélène|title=L'enseignement des mathématiques au XXe siècle dans le contexte français|url=http://culturemath.ens.fr/histoiredesmaths/htm/Gispert08-reformes/Gispert08.htm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170715164210/http://culturemath.ens.fr/histoire%20des%20maths/htm/Gispert08-reformes/Gispert08.htm|archive-date=July 15, 2017|access-date=November 4, 2020|website=CultureMATH|language=FR}}</ref> In the United States, the "[[New Math]]" initiative—under which students received lessons in set theory, which is what mathematicians actually use to construct the set of real numbers, something advanced undergraduates learned in a course on [[real analysis]],<ref group="note">See [[Dedekind cut]]s and [[Cauchy sequence]]s.</ref> and arithmetic with bases other than ten<ref group="note">See, for example, [[Binary number|binary arithmetic]], useful in computer science. Also see [[modular arithmetic]], previously known as clockwork arithmetic.</ref>—was similarly unsuccessful,<ref name="Knudson-201d" /> and was widely criticized by not just parents,<ref name="Knudson-201d" /> but also STEM experts.<ref name="Kline2">{{cite book |last=Kline |first=Morris |title=Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]] |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-394-71981-8 |location=New York |pages=17, 98}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Simmons |first=George F. |title=Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry |publisher=[[Wipf and Stock Publishers]] |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-59244-130-3 |page=33 |chapter=Algebra &ndash; Introduction |access-date=November 4, 2020 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dN1KAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203081304/https://books.google.com/books?id=dN1KAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA33 |archive-date=February 3, 2023 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Feynman |first=Richard P. |year=1965 |title=New Textbooks for the 'New' Mathematics |url=http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Engineering and Science |volume=XXVIII |issue=6 |pages=9–15 |issn=0013-7812 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729023112/http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf |archive-date=July 29, 2013}}</ref> Nevertheless, the influence of the Bourbaki school in mathematics education lived on, as the Soviet mathematician [[Vladimir Arnold]] recalled in a 1995 interview.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lui|first=S.H.|date=1995|title=An Interview with Vladimir Arnold|url=https://www.ams.org/notices/199704/arnold.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000930130302/http://www.ams.org/notices/199704/arnold.pdf |archive-date=September 30, 2000 |url-status=live|journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society|volume=44|issue=4|pages=432–8}}</ref>

Before World War II, the share of university-educated people in even the most advanced of industrialized nations, except the United States, a world leader in post-secondary education, was negligible. After the war, the number of university students skyrocketed, not just in the West, but also among developing countries as well. In Europe, between 1960 and 1980, the number of university students increased by a factor of four to five in West Germany, Ireland, and Greece, a factor of five to seven in Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Italy, and a factor of seven to nine in Spain and Norway.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> In West Germany, the number of university students steadily grew in the 1960s despite the construction of the Berlin Wall, which prevented East German students from coming. By 1966, West Germany had a grand total of 400,000 students, up from 290,000 in 1960.<ref name="Begehr-1998" /> In the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the number of university students as a share of the population grew from around 0.8% to 3% between 1975 and 1983. Families typically considered higher education to be the gateway towards a higher social status and higher income, or, in short, a better life; as such they pushed their children to university whenever possible. In general, the postwar economic expansion made it possible for a larger percentage of the population to send their children to university as full-time students. Moreover, many Western welfare states, starting with U.S. government subsidies to military veterans who wished to attend university, provided financial aid in one form or another to university students, though they were still expected to live frugally. In most countries, with the notable exceptions of Japan and the U.S., universities were more likely to be public rather than private. The total number of universities worldwide more than doubled in the 1970s. The rise of university campuses and university towns was a culturally and politically novel phenomenon, and one that would usher in the political turbulence of the late 1960s around the world.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

After World War I, the goal of primary education in the United States shifted from using schools to realize social change to employing them to promote emotional development. While it might have helped students improve their mental welfare, critics pointed to the de-emphasizing of traditional academic subjects leading to poor work habits and plain ignorance. Such a system became less and less tenable because society increasingly demanded rigorous education. In his book ''[[The American High School Today]]'' (1959), former Harvard president [[James B. Conant]] laid out his critique of the status quo. In particular, he pointed to the failure of English classes in teaching proper grammar and composition, the neglect of foreign languages, and the inability to meet the needs of gifted and slow students alike. People like Conant rose to prominence due to the successful launch of the ''[[Sputnik 1|Sputnik]]'' satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957.<ref name="Garraty-1991" /> As a matter of fact, the passages of the artificial satellite were recorded by the Boston newspapers and viewed with the naked eye from rooftops.<ref name="Stroke-2013">{{Cite journal|last=Stroke|first=H. Henry|date=August 1, 2013|title=''Electricity and Magnetism''|url=https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2085|journal=Physics Today|volume=66|issue=8|pages=48–50|doi=10.1063/PT.3.2085|bibcode=2013PhT....66R..48S|access-date=October 11, 2020|archive-date=October 24, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221024143016/https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.2085|url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:University of Chicago Law School, 1955-63. Law School - 00441v.jpg|thumb|300x300px|Large numbers of Americans pursued higher education after World War II. ''Pictured'': the [[University of Chicago Law School]] (1955–63)]]
This surprising Soviet success demonstrated to the Americans that their education system had fallen behind.<ref name="Knudson-201d">{{Cite news|last=Knudson|first=Kevin|date=2015|title=The Common Core is today's New Math – which is actually a good thing|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/the-common-core-is-todays-new-math-which-is-actually-a-good-thing-46585|access-date=September 9, 2015|archive-date=September 15, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150915194402/http://theconversation.com/the-common-core-is-todays-new-math-which-is-actually-a-good-thing-46585|url-status=live}}</ref> ''Life'' magazine reported that three quarters of American high-school students took no physics at all. The U.S. government realized it needed thousands of scientists and engineers to match the might of its ideological rival. On President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]'s direct orders, science education underwent major reforms and the federal government started pouring enormous sums of money into not just education but also research and development. Private institutions, such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation provided funding for education, too.<ref name="Garraty-1991" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Farmelo|first=Graham|title=The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom|publisher=Basic Books|year=2009|isbn=978-0-465-02210-6|pages=363|chapter=Twenty-six: 1958-1962}}</ref> Authors felt inspired to cater to the physics textbook market, and one of the results was the ''[[Berkeley Physics Course]]'', a series for undergraduates influenced by MIT's [[Physical Science Study Committee]], formed right before the launch of ''Sputnik''. One of the most famous of textbooks from the ''Berkeley'' series is ''[[Electricity and Magnetism (book)|Electricity and Magnetism]]'' by Nobel laureate [[Edward Mills Purcell]], which has gone through multiple editions and remains in print in the twenty-first century.<ref name="Stroke-2013" />

In any case, academic performance reclaimed its importance in the United States. At the same time, large numbers of young people desired to go to college due to population growth and the needs of society for specialized skills. Prestigious institutions were able to handpick the very best of students from massive pools of applications and consequently became the training centers for a growing class of cognitive elites. Indeed, the share of college graduates among 23-year-olds steadily rose after World War II, first due to veterans returning to civilian life and later due to people born after the war. In 1950, there were 2.6 million students in American institutions of higher learning. By 1970, that number was 8.6 million, and by 1980, it became 12 million.<ref name="Garraty-1991">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=896–7|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. Rethinking Public Education}}</ref> In the 1970s, there was a seemingly infinite number of Baby Boomers applying for admissions at institutions of higher learning in the U.S., so much so that many schools became extremely difficult to get into. This cooled off by the 1980s, though.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Gray|first=Eliza|date=October 21, 2019|title=Are Liberal Arts Colleges Doomed?|work=The Washington Post Magazine|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2019/10/21/downfall-hampshire-college-broken-business-model-american-higher-education/|access-date=November 3, 2020}}</ref> In the end, about a quarter of Baby Boomers had at least a bachelor's degree.<ref>{{Cite news|date=September 12, 2020|title=Younger Americans feel their voting weight|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/12/younger-americans-feel-their-voting-weight|url-status=live|access-date=September 11, 2020|archive-date=September 10, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200910211847/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/12/younger-americans-feel-their-voting-weight}}</ref> More women earned university degrees than ever before, and became professionals at an unprecedented rate.<ref name="Twenge-2023b">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Twenge |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 3: Boomers}}</ref> Because so many Baby Boomers pursued higher education, costs started to rise, making the Silent Generation was the last cohort to benefit from tuition-free public universities anywhere in the United States.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> The number of women pursuing higher education grew in other countries, too, including those on the other side of the Iron Curtain.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

American physicist [[Herbert Callen]] observed that even though a survey conducted by the American Physical Society Committee on the Applications of Physics reported (in the ''Bulletin of the APS'') in 1971 that industry leaders desired a greater emphasis on more practical subjects, such as thermodynamics as opposed to the more abstract statistical mechanics, academia subsequently went the other way.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Callen|first=Herbert|title=Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics|title-link=Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=1985|isbn=978-0-471-86256-7|location=United States of America|chapter=Preface}}</ref> British physicist [[Paul Dirac]], who had relocated to the United States in the 1970s, opined to his colleagues he doubted the wisdom of educating so many undergraduates in science when so many of them had neither the interest nor the aptitude.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Farmelo|first=Graham|title=The Strangest Man: the Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom|publisher=Basic Books|year=2009|isbn=978-0-465-02210-6|pages=393|chapter=Twenty-eight: February 1971-September 1982}}</ref> Having a youth bulge can be seen as one factor among many in explaining social unrest and uprisings in society.<ref name="cfr.org">{{cite web |title=The Effects of 'Youth Bulge' on Civil Conflicts |url=http://www.cfr.org/society-and-culture/effects-youth-bulge-civil-conflicts/p13093 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130527020909/http://www.cfr.org/society-and-culture/effects-youth-bulge-civil-conflicts/p13093 |archive-date=May 27, 2013 |access-date=April 21, 2018}}</ref> Quantitative historian [[Peter Turchin]] noted intensifying competition among graduates, whose numbers were larger than what the economy could absorb, a phenomenon he termed [[elite overproduction]], led to political polarization, social fragmentation, and even violence as many became disgruntled with their dim prospects despite having attained a high level of education. Income inequality, stagnating or declining real wages, and growing public debt were contributory factors. Turchin argued that having a [[Population pyramid#Youth bulge|youth bulge]] and massive young population with university degrees were the key reasons for the instability of the 1960s and 1970s and predicted that the 2020s would see the pattern repeat itself.<ref name="Turchin-2010">{{Cite journal|last=Turchin|first=Peter|date=February 3, 2010|title=Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade|journal=Nature|volume=403|issue=7281|pages=608|doi=10.1038/463608a|pmid=20130632|bibcode=2010Natur.463..608T|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Because the baby boomers were a huge demographic cohort, when they entered the workforce they took up all the jobs they could find, including those below their skill levels. As a result, wages were depressed and many households needed two streams of income in order to pay their bills.<ref name="Zeihan-2016" />
[[File:1968-06 1968年 红小兵参加学习毛泽东思想讲用会.jpg|thumb|Chinese students studied [[Maoism|Mao Zedong thought]] with the classic slogan "Study Hard and Make Progress Everyday" on the wall (1968).]]
In China, even though the Central Government made plans for increasing the people's access to education, school attendance, including at the elementary level, dropped by 25 million due to the Great Famine, and another fifteen million due to the Cultural Revolution. Yet despite all this, by the mid-1970s almost all Chinese children went to elementary school (96%), up six times from the early 1950s. Although Chinese figures for the people deemed illiterate or semi-literate appeared high—a quarter of Chinese over twelve years of age fell into these categories in 1984—the peculiarities of the Chinese language made direct comparisons with other countries difficult.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

Ignoring the skepticism of his comrades, Chairman Mao introduced the [[Hundred Flowers Campaign]] of 1956-57 encouraging intellectuals and elites from the old era to share their thoughts freely with the slogan, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred school of thoughts contend". Mao thought that his revolution had already transformed Chinese society for good. The result was an outburst of ideas deemed unacceptable by the CCP and above all, Mao himself, which fueled his distrust of intellectuals. Mao responded with the Cultural Revolution, which saw the intelligentsia being sent to the countryside for manual labor. Post-secondary education was almost completely abolished in mainland China. There existed only 48,000 university students in China in 1970, including 4,260 in the natural sciences and 90 in the social sciences, 23,000 technical school students in 1969, and 15,000 teachers in training in 1969. Data on post-graduate students was not available, presumably because there were no such students. China had a population of around 830 million in 1970.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" />

In China, the baby boomers grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when institutions of higher learning were closed. As a consequence, when China introduced some elements of capitalist reforms in the late 1970s, most of this cohort found itself at a severe disadvantage as people were unable to take the various jobs that became vacant.<ref name="Woodruff-2016" />

{{Clear}}

=== Cultural and sociopolitical identities ===

==== Popular culture ====
[[File:Family watching television 1958 cropped2.jpg|thumb|An American family gathering to watch television (1958)|alt=An American family gathering to watch television (1958)]]
The arrival of the [[television set]] made it possible for a family of modest means to be entertained in ways previously reserved for the wealthy.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> [[Soap opera]]s—characterized by melodramatic plots focused on interpersonal affairs and cheap production value—are a genre that was named after being sponsored by soap and detergent companies. They proved to be popular in the 1930s on radio and migrated to television in the 1950s. Again successful in the new broadcast environment, many of their viewers from the 1950s and 1960s grew old with them and introduced them to their children and grandchildren. In the United States, soap operas often dealt with the various social issues of the day, such as abortion, race relations, sexual politics, and inter-generational conflicts,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Shaath|first=Sarah|date=March 27, 2019|title=Decline of soap operas: Was OJ Simpson to blame?|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47585335|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=November 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107231628/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47585335|url-status=live}}</ref> and they often took positions that were, by the standards of their day, progressive.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Ali|first=Lorraine|date=March 2019|title=For 70 Years, the Soap Opera Has Shaped American Pop Culture|work=Smithsonian Magazine|department=Arts and Culture|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/for-70-years-soap-opera-shaped-american-pop-culture-180971439/|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=October 30, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201030232547/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/for-70-years-soap-opera-shaped-american-pop-culture-180971439/|url-status=live}}</ref> In Europe, and especially in the United Kingdom, the top soap operas typically featured working- or middle-class people, and most soap operas promoted post-war [[Social democracy|social-democratic]] values.<ref>{{Cite news|last=O'Donnell|first=Hugh|date=February 17, 2015|title=Why the soap opera is in terminal decline|work=The Conversation|url=https://theconversation.com/why-the-soap-opera-is-in-terminal-decline-37669|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=April 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414125110/https://theconversation.com/why-the-soap-opera-is-in-terminal-decline-37669|url-status=live}}</ref>[[File:Londons Carnaby Street, 1966.jpg|thumb|Young people in London (circa 1966). Prosperity played a role in shaping the youth culture of the 1960s.|left]]Following the Second World War, the United States was not just a land of peace and prosperity but also of anxiety and fear, of cultural deviancy and ideological subversion. And one victim of said paranoia was comic books.<ref name=":0" /> Comic books were blamed for the rise in [[juvenile delinquency in the United States|juvenile delinquency in that country]] was blamed on comic books because a number juvenile offenders admitted to reading them.<ref name="Mooney">{{cite web |last=Mooney |first=Joe |date=April 19, 1987 |title=It's No Joke: Comic Books May Help Kids Learn to Read |url=http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1987/8701100104.asp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20100117192458/http://www.seattlepi.com/archives/1987/8701100104.asp |archive-date=January 17, 2010 |access-date=September 23, 2008 |work=[[Seattle Post-Intelligencer]]}}</ref> This culminated in the book ''[[Seduction of the Innocent]]'' (1954) by [[Fredric Wertham]],<ref name="Mooney" /> causing a decline in the comics industry.<ref name="Mooney" /> To address public concerns, in 1954 the [[Comics Code Authority]] was created to regulate and curb violence in comics, marking the start of a new era, the [[Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age of American comics]], which lasted until the early 1970s.<ref name="Blumberg">{{cite journal |last=Blumberg |first=Arnold T. |date=Fall 2003 |title='The Night Gwen Stacy Died': The End of Innocence and the Birth of the Bronze Age |url=http://reconstruction.eserver.org/034/blumberg.htm |url-status=dead |journal=Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture |issn=1547-4348 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100116034408/http://reconstruction.eserver.org/034/blumberg.htm |archive-date=January 16, 2010 |access-date=February 20, 2009}}</ref> Unlike those of the Golden Age, stories from the Silver Age moved away from horror, and crime.<ref>See, e.g. {{Cite book |last=Robbins |first=Trina |author-link=Trina Robbins |title=From Girls to Grrrlz |publisher=[[Chronicle Books]] |year=1999 |location=[[San Francisco, California]] |pages=45, 52–54, 67, 69–70, 76–77 and throughout}}</ref> Plots shifted towards romance and [[science fiction]], deemed acceptable by the Code.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Simonson |first=Louise |title=DC Comics Covergirls |publisher=Chartwell Books |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-7858-3436-6 |location=New York |chapter=Introduction}}</ref> For a variety of stories and characters, scientific-sounding concepts replaced magic and gods.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Callahan |first=Timothy |date=August 6, 2008 |title=In Defense of Superhero Comics |url=http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17623 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090429080152/http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17623 |archive-date=April 29, 2009 |access-date=September 5, 2008 |website=Comic Book Resources}}</ref> Many plots were [[Escapism|escapist]] fantasies and reflected the cultural zeitgeist of the day, featuring traditional family values (with an emphasis on gender roles and marriage) as well as gender equality.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Walker |first=Landry Q. |title=Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Warrior |publisher=DK |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-4654-6072-1 |location=New York |pages=68–71 |chapter=The Silver Age}}</ref>

[[J. D. Salinger]]'s ''[[The Catcher in the Rye]]'' (1951) attracted the attention of adolescent readers even though it was written for adults. The themes of adolescent angst and alienation in the novel have become synonymous with [[Young adult literature|young-adult literature]].<ref name="Owen">{{cite journal |last1=Owen |first1=Mary |date=Mar 2003 |title=Developing a love of reading: why young adult literature is important |url=https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=200305405;res=IELAPA |journal=Orana |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=11–17 |issn=0045-6705 |access-date=23 May 2020}}</ref> But according to [[Michael Cart]], it was the 1960s that saw the maturing of novels for teenagers and young adults.<ref>Cart, p. 43,</ref> One early example of this genre was [[S. E. Hinton]]'s ''[[The Outsiders (novel)|The Outsiders]]'' (1967). The novel features a truer, darker side of adolescent life that was not often represented in works of fiction of the time.<ref>Jon Michaud, [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hinton-outsiders-young-adult-literature "S. E. Hinton and the Y.A. Debate"], ''[[The New Yorker]]'', 14 October 2014</ref><ref>Constance Grady,"[https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/26/15841216/outsiders-harry-potter-ya-young-adult-se-hinton-jk-rowling The Outsiders reinvented young adult fiction. Harry Potter made it inescapable.]," ''[[Vox (website)]]'', 26 January 2017</ref> Written during high school and written when Hinton was only 16,<ref name="penguin">{{cite web |title=''The Outsiders'' |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536555/the-outsiders-by-se-hinton |access-date=18 November 2019 |publisher=Penguin Random House}}</ref> ''The Outsiders'' also lacked the nostalgic tone common in books about adolescents written by adults.<ref name="Peck">{{Cite news |last=Peck |first=Dale |date=2007-09-23 |title='The Outsiders': 40 Years Later |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/review/Peck-t.html |access-date=2024-05-09 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> ''The Outsiders'' remains one of the best-selling young-adult novels of all time.<ref name="Peck" /> ''[[Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.]]'' (1970) by [[Judy Blume]] was another major success.<ref name="holmes">{{cite magazine |last=Holmes |first=Anna |date=March 22, 2012 |title=Judy Blume's Magnificent Girls |url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/judy-blumes-magnificent-girls |access-date=April 5, 2016 |magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=April 13, 2023 |title=Time 100 |url=https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2023/ |access-date=April 15, 2023 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]}}</ref> Blume was one of the first novelists who focused on such controversial topics as masturbation, menstruation, teen sex, birth control, and death.<ref name="hclib">{{cite web |year=2015 |title=Pen Pals with Judy Blume in conversation with Nancy Pearl |url=http://www.supporthclib.org/event/pen-pals-with-judy-blume-in-conversation-with-nancy-pearl/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504232033/http://www.supporthclib.org/event/pen-pals-with-judy-blume-in-conversation-with-nancy-pearl/ |archive-date=May 4, 2016 |access-date=April 5, 2016 |publisher=Friends of the Hennepin County Library}}</ref><ref name="edwards">{{cite web |year=1996 |title=1996 Margaret A. Edwards Award Winner |url=http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/bookawards/margaretaedwards/maeprevious/1996awardwinner |access-date=April 5, 2016 |publisher=Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). American Library Association}}</ref>
{{Clear}}

==== Cultural influences ====
{{See also|Teen idol}}[[File:Beauvoir Sartre - Che Guevara -1960 - Cuba.jpg|thumb|(Left to right) [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], and Ernesto Che Guevara meeting in Cuba, 1960. They were some of the radical icons of the 1960s.]]

In the West, those born in the years before the actual boom were often the most influential people among boomers. Some of these people were musicians such as [[The Beatles]], [[Bob Dylan]], and [[The Rolling Stones]]; writers like [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Allen Ginsberg]], [[Betty Friedan]], [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], [[Herbert Marcuse]] and other authors of the [[Frankfurt School]] of Social Theory; and political leaders such as Mao Zedong, [[Fidel Castro]], and [[Che Guevara]].<ref name="Suri-2009" /><ref name="Owram1997xiv" /><ref name="Gaddis-2005" /><ref name="Garraty-1991c1" /> As romanticists and idealists safe from political retribution, radical youths did not care for competency or results as much as ideology. To this end, revolutionary icons such as Mao, Castro, or Guevara proved to be potent symbols.<ref name="Gaddis-2005" /> Parents, by contrast, saw their influence greatly diminished. This was a time of rapid change, and what the parents could teach their children was less important than what the children knew and what their parents did not. For young people, life was vastly different from what their parents experienced during the interwar and war years. Economic depression, mass unemployment, war, and chaos were a distant memory; full employment and material comfort were the norm. Such a drastic difference in outlook and experience created a rift between the generations. As for the peers, they did have a significant influence on young people, for while the ''modus operandi'' of youth culture at the time was to be oneself and to disregard the opinions of others, in practice, [[peer pressure]] ensured conformity and uniformity, at least within a given subculture.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />[[File:Betty Friedan 1960.jpg|thumb|256x256px|Betty Friedan's ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'' (1963) triggered the second wave of [[feminism]] from the 1960s to the 1980s.<ref name="Drucker-2018">{{Cite web |last=Drucker |first=Sally Ann |date=April 27, 2018 |title=Betty Friedan: The Three Waves of Feminism |url=http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026035930/http://www.ohiohumanities.org/betty-friedan-the-three-waves-of-feminism/ |archive-date=October 26, 2020 |access-date=December 18, 2020 |website=Ohio Humanities}}</ref> by questioning the era's social norms, in particular its insistence on traditional gender roles.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" />|left]]
In the United States, the Baby Boomers lived through a period of dramatic cultural cleavage between the left-leaning proponents of change and the more conservative individuals. Analysts believe this cleavage has played out politically from the time of the Vietnam War to the present day,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Landon |date=August 24, 2016 |title=This Election Is the Baby Boomers' Last Hurrah |url=https://time.com/4463495/election-baby-boomers/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808090542/https://time.com/4463495/election-baby-boomers/ |archive-date=August 8, 2020 |access-date=June 28, 2020 |publisher=Time}}</ref> to some extent defining the divided political landscape in the country.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sullivan |first=Andrew |date=November 6, 2007 |title=Goodbye to all of that |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100103235533/http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama |archive-date=January 3, 2010<!--DASHBot--> |access-date=August 27, 2010 |publisher=Theatlantic.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Broder |first=John M. |date=January 21, 2007 |title=Shushing the Baby Boomers |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/weekinreview/21broder.html |url-status=live |access-date=March 31, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402104446/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/weekinreview/21broder.html |archive-date=April 2, 2019}}</ref> Leading-edge boomers are often associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, the later years of the [[civil rights movement]], and the [[second-wave feminism|"second-wave" feminist cause]] of the 1970s.<ref name="Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D 2007" /><ref name="Steuerle-2013" /> Conversely, many trended in moderate to conservative directions opposite to the counterculture, especially those making professional careers in the military (officer and enlisted), law enforcement, business, blue-collar trades, and Republican Party politics.<ref name="Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D 2007">{{cite web |author=Isabel Sawhill, Ph.D |author2=John E. Morton |year=2007 |title=Economic Mobility: Is the American Dream Alive and Well? |url=http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/sawhill/200705.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130529155632/http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/sawhill/200705.pdf |archive-date=May 29, 2013 |access-date=March 22, 2013}}</ref><ref name="Steuerle-2013">{{cite web |last=Steuerle |first=Eugene |author2=Signe-Mary McKernan |author3=Caroline Ratcliffe |author4=Sisi Zhang |year=2013 |title=Lost Generations? Wealth Building Among Young Americans |url=http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412766-Lost-Generations-Wealth-Building-Among-Young-Americans.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141116072709/http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412766-Lost-Generations-Wealth-Building-Among-Young-Americans.pdf |archive-date=November 16, 2014 |access-date=March 22, 2013 |publisher=Urban Institute}}</ref> On the other hand, trailing-edge boomers (also known as [[Generation Jones]]) came of age in the "[[malaise era]]" of the 1970s with events such as the [[Watergate scandal]], the [[1973–1975 recession]], the [[1973 oil crisis]], the [[United States Bicentennial]] (1976), and the [[Iran hostage crisis|Iranian hostage crisis]] (1979). Politically, early boomers in the United States tend to be Democrats, while later boomers tend to be Republicans.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Geiger |first=Abigail |date=September 3, 2015 |title=The Whys and Hows of Generations Research |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/09/03/the-whys-and-hows-of-generations-research/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221231025902/https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/09/03/the-whys-and-hows-of-generations-research/ |archive-date=December 31, 2022 |access-date=December 31, 2022 |website=Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy |language=en-US}}</ref>

During the 1960s and 1970s, the music industry made a fortune selling rock records to people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. This era was home to many youthful stars—people like [[Brian Jones]] of the Rolling Stones or [[Jimi Hendrix]]—who had lifestyles that all but guaranteed early deaths.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /><ref group="note">Also see [[life history theory]].</ref>

Across the Anglosphere, and increasingly in many other countries, middle- and upper-class youths started adopting the popular culture of the lower-classes, in stark contrast with previous generations. In the United Kingdom, for instance, young people from wealthy families changed their accents to approximate how working-class people spoke, and were not averse to the occasional use of profanities.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> In France, the fashion industry discovered that trousers could outsell skirts in the mid-1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> Blue jeans, made popular by the likes of actor [[James Dean]], steadily became a common sight across the Western world, even outside of college campuses.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

A remarkable characteristic of youth culture from this period is its internationalism. Whereas previous generations typically preferred cultural products from their own countries, those who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s readily consumed the music of other countries, above all the United States, the cultural hegemon of the era. English-language music was normally left untranslated. Musical styles from the Caribbean, Latin America, and later, Africa also proved popular.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In Roman Catholic countries such as Ireland and Italy, the 1960s and 1970s saw a schism between the Church and the young on issues such as divorce or abortion. In the Canadian province of Quebec, religious attendance plummeted in the same period.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In China, despite the passage of the National Marriage Law in 1950, which prohibited having concubines, allowed women to file for divorce, and banned arranged marriages, arranged marriages in fact remained common, and the notion of marrying for [[Romance (love)|romantic love]] was considered a capitalist invention to be opposed during the period of the Cultural Revolution.<ref name="Nectar-2021">{{Cite news|last=Nectar|first=Gan|date=January 30, 2021|title=Chinese millennials aren't getting married, and the government is worried|work=CNN|url=https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/china/china-millennials-marriage-intl-hnk/index.html|access-date=February 1, 2021|archive-date=October 13, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211013180533/https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/29/china/china-millennials-marriage-intl-hnk/index.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Counterculture ====
[[File:Prenez vos désirs pour des réalités - 1968.jpg|left|thumb|A graffiti telling students to "take your desires for reality" at [[University of Paris|the Sorbonne]], May 1968.]]
In the decades following the Second World War, cultural rebellion became a common feature in urbanized and industrialized societies, both East and West. In the context of the ideological competition of the [[Cold War]], governments sought to improve the material standards of living of their own citizens but also to encourage them to seek meaning in their daily lives. However, young people felt a sense of alienation and sought to assert their own "individuality,"  "freedom," and "authenticity". By the early 1960s, elements of the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]] had already entered public consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic, but were not yet viewed as a threat. But even then, West German Chancellor [[Konrad Adenauer]] acknowledged that the "most important problem of our epoch" was what many youths viewed as the empty [[Economic materialism|materialism]] and superficiality of modern life. In the Soviet Union, the official youth periodical, ''[[Komsomolskaya Pravda|Komsomol'skaia pravda]]'', called for attention to the "psychology of contemporary young people". By 1968, counterculture was considered a serious threat. In the United States, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) reported to the President that counterculture was a highly disruptive force not just in the nation but also abroad. In the CIA's view, it undermined societies East and West, from U.S. allies like West Germany, Japan, and South Korea to Communist nations like Poland, the Soviet Union, and China.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> Long-time director of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) J. Edgar Hoover suspected that students' protests and counterculture were instigated by Communist agents. However, the CIA subsequently found no evidence of foreign subversion.<ref name="Isaacs-1998">{{Cite book |last1=Isaacs |first1=Jeremy |title=Cold War: An Illustrated History |last2=Downing |first2=Taylor |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1998 |isbn=0-316-43953-3 |chapter=Culture Wars (1960-1968)}}</ref> Counterculture also affected Third World nations—those that chose to remain unaligned in the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, director of the Committee for State Security ([[KGB]]) [[Yuri Andropov]] became paranoid about the internal security. Under General Secretary [[Leonid Brezhnev]], the KGB amplified its efforts to suppress politically dissident voices, though the Soviet Union never quite returned to [[Joseph Stalin]]'s style of governance.<ref name="Suri-2009">{{Cite journal|last=Suri|first=Jeremi|date=February 2009|title=The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960-1975|journal=American Historical Review|volume=114|issue=1|pages=45–68|doi=10.1086/ahr.114.1.45|jstor=30223643|doi-access=free}}</ref>

With hindsight, the CIA's assessments proved overly pessimistic. These youth movements had a bark that was worse than their bite. Despite sounding radical, the proponents of counterculture did not exactly demand the complete destruction of society in order to build it anew; they only wanted to work within the confines of the ''[[status quo]]'' to bring about the change they desired. Changes, if they came, were less well-organized than the activists themselves. Moreover, the loudest and most visible participants of counterculture often came from privileged background—with heretofore unheard-of access to higher education, material comfort, and leisure—which allowed them to feel secure enough in their activism. Counterculture was therefore not about material desires.<ref name="Suri-2009" /><ref group="note">Also see [[virtue signalling]].</ref>

Counterculture did, however, come with an entire pharmacopeia, including [[Cannabis (drug)|marijuana]], amphetamines (such as "[[Dexamyl|purple hearts]]"), and [[Psilocybin mushroom|magic mushrooms]]. But perhaps the most notorious was a substance known as "acid" or [[LSD|lysergic acid diethylamide]] (LSD). Synthesized in 1938 by chemist [[Albert Hofmann|Albert Hoffmann]] in his quest to cure  migraine, its use as a psychedelic drug was promoted in the 1960s by psychologist [[Timothy Leary]]. Attempts to ban it in 1966 made the substance [[Streisand effect|even more popular]]. A number of cultural icons of the late 1960s, such as poet Allen Ginsberg were known for using this drug.<ref name="Isaacs-1998" />

During the 1960s, conservative students objected to the counterculture and found ways to celebrate their conservative ideals by reading books such as [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s ''A Study of Communism'', joining student organizations like the [[College Republicans]], and organizing [[Fraternities and sororities|Greek events]] which reinforced [[Gender role|gender norms]].<ref name="rollandiamondanotherside">{{cite journal |last1=Rolland-Diamond |first1=Caroline |date=2016 |title=Another Side of the Sixties: Festive Practices on College Campuses and the Making of a Conservative Youth Movement |url=http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_146_0039&WT.mc_id=RFEA_146 |journal=Revue Française d'Études Américaines |volume=1 |issue=146 |pages=39–53 |doi=10.3917/rfea.146.0039 |url-access=registration |access-date=October 24, 2016 |via=[[Cairn.info]] |archive-date=April 20, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420104318/https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RFEA_146_0039&WT.mc_id=RFEA_146 |url-status=live }}</ref> While historians disagree over the influence of the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|countercultural movements of the 1960s]] in American politics and society, they tend to describe it in similar terms. For instance, sociologist [[Todd Gitlin]] calls it self-indulgent, childish, irrational, narcissistic, and even dangerous.<ref>{{cite web |last1=George |first1=Jason |date=2004 |title=The Legacy of the Counterculture |url=http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/pcp/14203.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120328235327/http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu/pcp/14203.html |archive-date=March 28, 2012 |access-date=May 23, 2014 |website=columbia.edu |publisher=Columbia University}}</ref> Moreover, it is possible that this movement did no more than creating new marketing segments for the specific sectors of the population, the "hip" crowd.<ref>{{cite web |date=May 6, 2005 |title=The selling of the counterculture (Book Review: The Rebel Sell) |url=http://www.economist.com/node/4027702 |access-date=May 23, 2014 |website=economist.com |publisher=The Economist Newspaper Limited |archive-date=May 23, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140523230634/http://www.economist.com/node/4027702 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref group="note">Also see [[conspicuous consumption]].</ref>

==== Protests and riots ====
{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| width = 220
| header = 
| image1 = 1968-05 Évènements de mai à Bordeaux - Rue Paul-Bert 1.jpg
| caption1 = Barricades in Bordeaux, May 1968
| image2 = Graffito in University of Lyon classroom during student revolt of 1968.jpg
| caption2 = A wall graffiti made during student movements in May 1968 in a classroom at the University of Lyon
| image3 = Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.0008 (16474725704).jpg
| caption3 = West German youth protesters, 1968, with photos of Ho Chi Minh, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg
| image4 = Ludwig Binder Haus der Geschichte Studentenrevolte 1968 2001 03 0275.0148 (17076461192).jpg
| caption4 = Protesters clash with police in West Germany, 1967-68
| image5 = 010891 R433-005 LETREROS DE INSULTOS EN EL MITIN AGOSTO 27 1968 (33458252566).jpg
| caption5 = Protest signs read, "Mom, see you in court!" and "It is forbidden to forbid!" Mexico City, 1968.
| image6 = 1968-01 1968年 三支两军工作.jpg
| caption6 = Mao eventually deployed the PLA against the Red Guards in 1968.
| image7 = Monument to the hippie era. Tamil Nadu.jpg
| caption7 = A monument to the Hippie Trail, Tamil Nadu, India
| image8 = Anti-abortion_protest,_1986.jpg
| caption8 = Some anti-abortion protestors in San Francisco, California, 1986
| image9 = Demonstration, with Gay Liberation Front Banner, c1972 (7374381322).jpg
| caption9 = Members of the [[Gay Liberation Front]] protesting in London, 1972
| total_width = 
}}

When they came of age during the late 1960s and 1970s, Baby Boomers immediately became politically active and made themselves heard due to the sheer size of their demographic cohort.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Violent crime and protests increased markedly in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many proponents of counterculture idealized violence and armed struggle against what they considered oppression, drawing inspiration from conflicts in the Third World and from the [[Cultural Revolution]] in Communist China, a creation of [[Mao Zedong]] intended to thoroughly sever the ties of society to its history, with deadly results. Some young men and women simply refused to engage in dialogue with mainstream society and instead believed that violence was [[Status symbol|a sign of their status]] as resistance fighters.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> In [[May 68|May 1968]], French youths launched massive protest demanding social and educational reforms, while labor unions simultaneously initiated a general strike, prompting countermeasures by the government. This led to a general mayhem in a manner similar to a civil war, especially in Paris. Finally, the government acquiesced to the demands of the students and workers; [[Charles de Gaulle]] stepped down as president in 1969.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=438–9}}</ref>

In the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), the 1950s was a period of strong economic growth and prosperity. But like so many other Western nations, it soon faced severe political polarization thanks to youth revolts. By the 1960s there was a general feeling of stagnation, which stimulated the creation of the primarily student-backed [[Extra-parliamentary opposition|Extra-parliamentary Opposition]] (APO). One of the goals of the APO was reforms to the university system of admissions and registration. One of the most prominent APO activists was [[Rudi Dutschke]], who declared "the [[long march through the institutions]]" in the context of recruitment for the civil service. Another major student movement of this era was the [[Red Army Faction]] (RAF), a militant [[Marxism|Marxist]] group most active in the 1970s and the 1980s. Members of the RAF believed the West German economic and political systems to be inhumane and [[Fascism|fascist]]; they looted stores, robbed banks, and kidnapped or assassinated West German businessmen, politicians, and judges. The RAF's reign of terror lasted until around 1993. It disbanded itself in 1998.<ref>{{Cite book|last=National Geographic|title=Essential Visual History of the World|publisher=National Geographic Society|year=2007|isbn=978-1-4262-0091-5|pages=430–1}}</ref> The RAF turned out to be deadlier than its American counterpart, the [[Weather Underground]], which declared itself a "movement that fights, not just talks about fighting."<ref name="Suri-2009" />

Many West German youths in the late 1960s were suspicious of authority. Student demonstrators protested West Germany's rearmament, [[NATO]] membership, refusal to recognize the Democratic Republic of Germany ([[East Germany]]), and the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. On the other hand, the construction of the [[Berlin Wall]] (starting in August 1961, after the [[Berlin Crisis of 1961|Berlin standoff]]) by East Germany boosted anti-communist sentiments in the West, where there was growing demands for high academic standards and opposition to communist indoctrination. A sort of civil war erupted in German academia. The [[Free University of Berlin]] was the heart of West German student movements. Many leading professors left because of the asphyxiating political atmosphere. However, by the mid-1970s, things calmed down. Students were more interested in academics and career preparation.<ref name="Begehr-1998">{{Cite book|last=Begehr|first=H. G. W.|title=Mathematics in Berlin|publisher=Birkhäuser Verlag|year=1998|isbn=978-3-7643-5943-0|editor-last=Begehr, H. G. W.|location=Germany|pages=155–57|chapter=Freie Universität Berlin, A Summary of Its History|editor-last2=Koch, H|editor-last3=Krammer, J|editor-last4=Schappacher, N|editor-last5=Thiele, E.-J}}</ref> Indeed, counterculture had by this time invited stern public backlash. Resistance to change heightened. Major governments around the world implemented various policies intended to ensure "[[Law and order (politics)|law and order]]".<ref name="Suri-2009" />

Some well-known slogans among youth rebels were, "When I think of revolution I want to make love," "I take my desires for reality and I believe in the reality of my desires," and "We want everything and we want it now!" These were evidently not what would normally be recognized as political slogans; rather, they were subjective expressions of the private individual.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In general, though, no major government was overthrown by the protests and riots of the 1960s; indeed, governments proved rather stable during this turbulent period in history. Growing demands for change stimulated resistance to change.<ref name="Suri-2009" /> Frustrated with the lack of revolutionary results despite their protests, which some skeptical observers such as [[Raymond Aron]] dismissed as no more than '[[Psychological fiction|psychodrama]]' and '[[Street theatre|street theater]]', some students became radicalized and opted for violence and even terrorism to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, other than publicity they achieved little. Doing one's "revolutionary service"—as the joke goes in Peru—[[Careerism|did wonders for one's future career]], though. From Latin America to France, students were aware that the civil service recruited university graduates and in fact, many had a successful career working for the government after leaving radical groups (and in some cases, becoming completely apolitical). Governments understood that people became less rebellious as they aged.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

In the United States, protests against American participation in the War in Vietnam shook college campuses and cities across the nation, even though the U.S. Armed Forces were deployed for similar (anti-communist) reasons they were during the Korean War, a conflict that provoked little political headwind. This was a time of growing focus on the self and mistrust of authority. Young people were no longer interested in military service the way their forebears were. [[Draft evasion in the Vietnam War|Draft evasion]] grew, and many took to the streets to demand the abolition of [[Conscription in the United States|conscription]], which became a reality. Some of these student demonstrations grew violent, with fatal consequences.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Among counties that saw only peaceful demonstrations, the chances of the Democratic Party winning elections were unharmed. But in those that had riots, the Republican Party was able to attract new votes by appealing to the desire for security and stability. In fact, the backlash against the civil unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s was so strong that politicians in the 1990s like [[Bill Clinton]] had no choice but to endorse tough policies regarding public security in order to win elections.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Chait|first=Jonathan|date=May 21, 2015|title=New Study Shows Riots Make America Conservative|work=New York Intelligencer|url=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html|access-date=November 3, 2020|archive-date=November 3, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201103041739/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/05/new-study-shows-riots-make-america-conservative.html|url-status=live}}</ref> High-profile protestors such as the hippies who confronted the police were the target of public hostility and condemnation.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=January 30, 2023 |title=When Americans Lost Faith in the News |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news |access-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230206062732/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/06/when-americans-lost-faith-in-the-news |archive-date=February 6, 2023}}</ref>

As a group, Western left-wing activists and radicals of the 1960s were intellectuals, and this was reflected in the ways their variants of political action and beliefs, primarily drawn from the experience in the classroom rather than on the factory floor. Many of these remained in academia and consequently became an unprecedentedly large cadre of cultural and political radicals on campus.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hobsbawn|first=Eric|title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991|publisher=Abacus|year=1996|isbn=978-0-349-10671-7|chapter=Chapter Fifteen: Third World and Revolution}}</ref>

One side effect of the student revolts of the late-1960s was that it made unions and workers realize they could demand more from their employers. Nevertheless, after so many years of full employment and growing wages and benefits, the working class was simply uninterested in starting a revolution.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> To the contrary, some Americans even took to the streets to denounce counterculture and anti-war activists in the context of the War in Vietnam.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Isaacs |first1=Jeremy |title=Cold War: An Illustrated History |last2=Downing |first2=Taylor |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1998 |isbn=0-316-43953-3 |chapter=Détente (1969-1975)}}</ref>

In China, Chairman Mao in 1965 created the [[Red Guards]], which initially consisted mainly of students, to purge dissident CCP officials and intellectuals in general, as part of the Cultural Revolution. The result was general mayhem. Mao eventually opted to deploy the People's Liberation Army against his own Red Guards to restore public order.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996d" /> Mao disposed of millions of Red Guards by sending them to the countryside.<ref name="Gaddis-2005">{{Cite book |last=Gaddis |first=John Lewis |title=The Cold War: A New History |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2005 |isbn=978-0143038276 |chapter=IV: The Emergence of Autonomy |author-link=John Lewis Gaddis}}</ref>

==== Hippies and the Hippie Trail ====
The youthful proponents of counterculture, known as the [[hippie]]s, disapproved of the modern world so much they sought refuge from it in [[Intentional community|communes]] and [[Mysticism|mystical religions]]. During the 1960s and 1970s, large groups of them could be found in any major European or American city. Male hippies wore long hair and grew beards, while female hippies eschewed anything that women traditionally wore to make themselves attractive, such as [[Cosmetics|makeup]] and [[bra]]s. Hippies were iconoclasts to varying degrees and rejected the traditional work ethic. They preferred love to money, feelings to facts, and natural things to manufactured items. They engaged in [[casual sex]] and used various [[hallucinogen]]s. They were generally pacifists and pessimists. Many disliked politics and activism, though they were influenced by the political atmosphere of the time.<ref name="Garraty-1991b">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John A.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=HarperCollins Publishers|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=900–1|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. The Counterculture}}</ref> A significant cultural event of this era was the [[Woodstock]] Festival in August 1969, which drew huge crowds despite bad weather and a general lack of facilities.<ref name="Garraty-1991b" /> Although it is commonly asserted that some half a million people attended, the actual figure is difficult to determine, even with aerial photography, as crowd experts would attest.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Henshaw|first=John M.|title=An Equation for Every Occasion|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2014|isbn=978-1-4214-1491-1|location=Baltimore|chapter=Chapter 12: Woodstock Nation}}</ref>

The so-called [[Hippie trail|Hippie Trail]] probably started in the mid-1950s, as expeditions of wealthy tourists and students traveling in small groups. They started from the United Kingdom, heading eastwards. As [[Western Europe]]an economies grew, so did demand for international travel; many bus services sprang up to serve tourists. The first hippies—initially used to refer to men with long hair—joined the trail in the late 1960s. Many young people were beguiled by [[Eastern religions]] and mysticism, and they wanted to visit Asia to learn more. Others wanted to escape the conventional lifestyles of their home countries or saw opportunities for profit. Some smoked [[Cannabis (drug)|marijuana]] and wished to visit the Middle East and [[South Asia]], where their favored products came from. But air travel was in its infancy at this time in history and was beyond the reach of most. For those seeking an adventure, traveling by long-distance bus and trains from Western Europe to Asia became an affordable alternative. But not all who traversed the Hippie Trail were from Europe. In fact, many hailed from Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Visas were easily obtained and in some cases were not required at all.<ref name="Gregory-2020" /> Many young and naive Western tourists fell victim to scammers, tricksters, and even murderers, taking advantage of the nascent global drug culture at the time.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Saksena|first=Abhishek|date=May 28, 2015|title=12 Things You Didn't Know About The Infamous Charles Sobhraj|work=India Times|url=https://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-infamous-charles-sobhraj-233025.html|access-date=November 4, 2020|archive-date=November 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108124117/http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/12-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-infamous-charles-sobhraj-233025.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=August 12, 2004|title=The 'bikini-killer' linked to murders throughout Asia|work=BBC News|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3867791.stm|access-date=November 4, 2020|archive-date=May 12, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090512185834/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3867791.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> The Hippie Trail ended in 1979 with the [[Iranian Revolution]] and the start of the [[Soviet–Afghan War]] (1979–1989).<ref name="Gregory-2020">{{Cite web|last=Gregory|first=Richard|title=A Brief History of the Hippie Trail|url=https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail.htm|access-date=November 1, 2020|website=Richard Gregory|archive-date=November 11, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111215149/https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==== Sexual revolution and feminism ====
In the United Kingdom, the [[R v Penguin Books Ltd|Lady Chatterley trial]] (1959) and the first long-play of the Beatles, ''[[Please Please Me]]'' (1963) were to begin the process of altering public perception of [[Human mating strategies|human mating]], a cause subsequently taken up by young people seeking personal liberation.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /><ref group="note">See this [[R v Penguin Books Ltd#Legal and cultural consequences|1974 poem]] by the poet [[Philip Larkin]].</ref>

In the United States, the [[Food and Drug Administration|Food and Drugs Administration]] (FDA) in May 1960 approved the first contraceptive pill, a drug that has had a huge impact on the nation's history.<ref>{{Cite web|last=American Experience|date=February 24, 2003|title=The Pill|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pill/|access-date=January 9, 2021|website=PBS|archive-date=March 2, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302171009/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/pill/|url-status=live}}</ref> Invented by [[Gregory Goodwin Pincus|Gregory Pincus]] in 1956, [[Combined oral contraceptive pill|the pill]], as it is commonly called, marked the first time in human history when sexuality and reproduction can be reliably separated.<ref name="Brenot-2017">{{Cite book |last1=Brenot |first1=Philippe |title=The Story of Sex: A Graphic History through the Ages |last2=Coryn |first2=Laetitia |publisher=Black Dog & Leventhal |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-316-47222-7 |location=New York |translator-last=McMorran |translator-first=Will |chapter=Chapter 11 - The 20th Century: Sexual Liberation}}</ref> The pill and antibiotics capable of curing various venereal diseases eliminated two leading arguments against extra-marital sex, paving the way for the [[sexual revolution]].<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> But the revolution did not happen right away; it was not until the 1980s that the pill become widely available in the United States and other Western nations.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> In fact, the first wave of Baby Boomers married and had children early, following the footsteps of their parents.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> Eventually, though, political attitudes towards human sexuality altered dramatically in the late 1960s because of young people. Although the behavior of most Americans did not change overnight, the heretofore mainstream beliefs on issues such as [[premarital sex]], birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and pornography were openly challenged and no longer considered automatically valid. Individuals no longer feared social consequences when they expressed deviant ideas.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s were the most consequential in the history of human sexuality. While there was a backlash on moral or religious grounds, the sexual mores in Western societies were forever changed.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> Nevertheless, there were concerns over possible abandonment or disrespect among (older) teenage girls and young women if they were to offer themselves to their boyfriends, a sentiment captured by the song "[[Will You Love Me Tomorrow]]?" from 1960.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> [[Going steady]]—the practice of dating one person exclusively (as opposed to "playing the field")—rose in popularity among young Americans following the Second World War<ref name="flc">{{cite journal |last1=Poffenberger |first1=Thomas |date=Jan 1964 |title=Three Papers on Going Steady |journal=The Family Life Coordinator |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=7–13 |doi=10.2307/581501 |jstor=581501}}

* {{Cite journal |date=1964 |title=Errata: Three Papers on Going Steady |journal=The Family Life Coordinator |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=78 |doi=10.2307/581440 |issn=0886-0394 |jstor=581440}}</ref> and was part of mainstream youth culture through the 1980s, with teenagers beginning to go steady at progressively earlier ages.<ref name="spurlock">{{Cite book |last=Spurlock |first=John C. |title=Youth and sexuality in the twentieth-century United States |date=2016 |isbn=9781138817487 |location=New York |pages=63–116 |oclc=898926426}}</ref>

Sexologist [[Alfred Kinsey|Alfred C. Kinsey]]'s books, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'' (1948) and ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Female'' (1958), employed confidential interviews to proclaim that sexual behaviors previously deemed unusual were more common than people thought. Despite triggering a storm of criticisms, the [[Kinsey Reports]] earned him the nickname the "Marx of the sexual revolution" due to their revolutionary influence. Many men and women celebrated their newfound freedom and had their satisfactions, but the sexual revolution also paved the way to new problems.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2"/> Many young people were under peer pressure to enter relationships they felt they were ill-prepared for, with serious psychological consequences. Illegitimate births ballooned, as did sexually transmitted diseases. Public health officials raised the alarm on an epidemic of [[gonorrhea]] and the emergence of the lethal acquired immune deficiency syndrome ([[HIV/AIDS|AIDS]]). Because many had strong opinions on various subjects relating to sexuality, the sexual revolution exacerbated sociopolitical stratification.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John S.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=901–3|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. The Sexual Revolution}}</ref>

Coupled with the sexual revolution was a new wave of feminism, as the relaxation of traditional views heightened women's awareness of what they might be able to change. Competition in the job market led many to demand equal pay for equal work and government-funded daycare services. Some groups, such as the [[National Organization for Women]] (NOW) equated women's rights with civil rights and copied the tactics of black activists, demanding an [[Equal Rights Amendment]], changes to the divorce laws making them more favorable to women, and the legalization of abortion.<ref name="Garraty-1991c1" />

In her book ''The Feminine Mystique'', Betty Friedan discussed what she called "the problem that has no name"—namely, that married women with children were unhappy as housewives because "There is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no way she can even dream about herself, except as her children’s mother, her husband’s wife."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mukhopadhyay |first=Samhita |date=August 5, 2020 |title=One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/pandemic-changing-my-mind-about-having-kids/614896/ |archive-url=https://archive.is/X687R |archive-date=August 30, 2020 |access-date=November 3, 2024 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> "[[The personal is political]]" became the motto for the [[Second-wave feminism|second wave of feminism]].<ref name="Drucker-2018" /> But the feminist movement splintered, because some became radicalized and thought that groups such as NOW were not enough. Such [[Radical feminism|radical feminists]] believed that people should start using [[gender-neutral language]], marriage should be abolished, and that the traditional family unit was "a decadent, energy-absorbing, destructive, wasteful institution," rejected [[heterosexuality]] as a matter of principle, and attacked "not just capitalism, but men." At the other extreme, staunch [[Social conservatism|social conservatives]] launched a major backlash, for example, by starting [[anti-abortion movement]]s after the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] declared abortion constitutional in ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'' (1973). Yet despite their best efforts, mainstream American society changed. Many women entered the workforce, taking a variety of jobs and thus altered the balance of power between the sexes.<ref name="Garraty-1991c1">{{Cite book|last=Garraty|first=John S.|title=The American Nation: A History of the United States|publisher=Harper Collins|year=1991|isbn=978-0-06-042312-4|location=United States of America|pages=903–6|chapter=Chapter XXXII Society in Flux, 1945-1980. Women's Liberation}}</ref>

Although the new feminist movement germinated in the United States in the 1960s, initially to address the concerns of middle-class women, thanks to the appearance of the word 'sex' in the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], which was primarily intended to prohibit racial discrimination, it quickly spread to other Western nations in the 1970s and especially the 1980s. More women realized how much power they had as a group and they made use of it immediately, as can be seen in reforms regarding divorce and abortion laws in Italy, for example.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Women flooded the workforce, and by the early 1980s, many sectors of the economy were feminized, though men continued to monopolize manual labor. Due to the [[law of supply and demand]], such a surge in the number of workers diminished the prestige and income of those jobs. For many middle-class married women, joining the workforce made little economic sense, after accounting for all the extra costs, such as paid childcare and house work, but many chose to work anyway in order to achieve financial independence. But as the desire to send one's children to university became ever more common, middle-class women worked outside the home for the same reason their poorer counterparts did: making ends meet. Nevertheless, at least among middle-class intellectuals, men became much more reluctant to disrupt the careers of their wives, who were not as willing to follow their husbands wherever their jobs led them as was the case for previous generations.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Although, in practice, the practitioners of feminism did not necessarily form an ideologically coherent group, they did succeed in creating a collective consciousness for women, something left-wing politicians in democracies were keen to acknowledge in order to court their votes. By the 1970s and 1980s, the traditional solidarity of the working class was fading away as different segments of this group began experience divergent economic prospects due to the continuation of industrial automation.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

Following the advent of a new atmosphere of sexual freedom, in the 1970s and 1980s, homosexuals were increasingly willing to demand acceptance by society and full legal rights.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /><ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> It proved difficult to object to what consenting adults practiced in private.<ref name="Garraty-1991c2" /> Stating one's commitment to a heretofore prohibited or ostracized way of life, that is, 'coming out', was important to [[LGBT social movements|this movement]]. Homosexuality was decriminalized in England, Wales, and the United States in the late 1960s.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> The world's first Gay Pride parade took place in 1969.<ref name="Brenot-2017" /> However, the [[HIV/AIDS]] epidemic acted as a brake on this social trend when its first victims were identified as such in the early 1980s. Writer [[Randy Shilts]], himself a gay man, noted, "HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all the shallow things we cling to, like ego and [[vanity]]. Of course, I'd rather have a few more [[T cell|T-cells]] and a little less character."<ref name="Twenge-2023">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Event Interlude: The AIDS Epidemic}}</ref>

==== Marriage and family ====
[[File:Families US.svg|thumb|By the final third of the twentieth century, the nuclear family was no longer the most common type of household in the United States and other Western nations.]]
Marriage in many developed countries became much less stable in the 1980s, when Baby Boomers were getting married. In the West, this manifested in rising divorce rates. But this pattern was not seen East Asia.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />{{rp|323}} Instead, the region saw declining marriage rates, particularly in Japan, where social changes led to the deterioration of Japanese men's social standing after World War II.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Coulmas |first1=Florian |title=Population Decline and Ageing in Japan - The Social Consequences |date=May 11, 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-14500-3 |page=105 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rJt9AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT105 |language=en |quote="...as a consequence of Japan's defeat in World War II, and the social changes it brought in its wake - reduced status of household head, better education opportunities for and achievements by women, increased female labour force participation, and a shift away from marriage by arrangement to marriage by mutual choice - men's social standing has been destabilized, robbing them of their self-confidence."}}</ref> Men in East Asia were more likely to be unmarried than men in the West.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Matsuda |first1=Shigeki |title=Low Fertility in Advanced Asian Economies: Focusing on Families, Education, and Labor Markets |date=January 3, 2020 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-981-15-0710-6 |pages=29–30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JNLHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30
|language=en}} Table 3, pages 29-30. "It is notable that the proportion of males who had ever married/cohabited in the three Asian
countries were lower than of males  in the same category in the European countries -- in other words, Asian men are more likely to be single."</ref>

Between 1970 and 1985, the number of divorces per thousand people doubled in Denmark and Norway and tripled in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In England and Wales, while there was only one divorce per fifty-two weddings in 1938, that number became one every 2.2 fifty years later; this trend accelerated in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Californian women visiting their doctors showed a marked decline in the desire for marriage and children. In all Western nations, the number of single-person households steadily rose. In the major metropolitan areas, half the population lived alone. Meanwhile, the "traditional" [[nuclear family]]—a phrase first coined in 1924—was in decline. In Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and West Germany, only a minority of households consisted of two parents and their children by the 1980s, down from half or more than half in 1960. In Sweden, such a family unit fell from 37% to 25% in the same period; in fact, more than half of all children in Sweden in the mid-1980s were born to unmarried women.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

In the United States, what set the Boomers apart from their parents was not their marriage rates, or that they married in their early 20s, but rather that they were much more likely to be divorced. Divorced Boomers were less likely to remarry than their counterparts from the Silent Generation.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Statistically, marrying before the age of 25 increased the probability of divorce.<ref name="Twenge-2023a" /> The nuclear family fell from 44% of all households in 1960 to 29% in 1980. But for African Americans, the figure was higher. In 1991, single mothers had given birth to the majority of children (70%) and headed a majority of households (58%).<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b">{{Cite book |last=Hobsbawm |first=Eric |url=https://archive.org/details/ageofextremeshis0000hobs/ |title=The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 |publisher=Abacus |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-349-10671-7 |chapter=Chapter Eleven: Cultural Revolution}}</ref> As women's labor participation rose, rumors that career-oriented women were unhappy and unfulfilled or that mothers regretted returning to work began to spread. Mothers-in-law and medical doctors began urging women to forgo their ambitions in order to have children early to avoid problems infertility later on. Popular media frequently exhorted working women—if implicitly—to quit their jobs. Nevertheless, the share of American adults who rejected traditional gender roles steadily rose during the 1970s and 1980s.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> As more and more women became financially independent, the traditional reason for women to marry faded away.<ref name="Burn-Murdoch-2024">{{Cite news |last=Burn-Murdoch |first=John |date=March 29, 2024 |title=Why family-friendly policies don't boost birth rates |url=https://www.ft.com/content/838eeb4e-3bff-4693-990f-ff3446cac9b2 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240329160813/https://www.ft.com/content/838eeb4e-3bff-4693-990f-ff3446cac9b2 |archive-date=March 29, 2024 |access-date=March 29, 2024 |work=Financial Times}}</ref> Marriage became increasingly viewed as an option, rather than an obligation.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> In fact, since the 1960s, marriage has stopped being primarily focused on having and raising children but instead, the fulfillment of adults.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Brooks |first=David |date=March 2020 |title=The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20231119143819/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ |archive-date=November 19, 2023 |access-date=April 12, 2024 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> Married men were noticeably less willing to disrupt the careers of their wives.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" /> Unmarried women were no longer deemed as "sick" or "immoral" the way they were in the 1950s. In addition, neither working mothers nor [[single parent]]hood (what used to be called [[Legitimacy (family law)|illegitimacy]]) was socially ostracized the way they used to be.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" />
[[File:Ms. magazine Cover - Spring 1972.jpg|thumb|[[Ms. (magazine)|''Ms.'' magazine]] cover, Spring 1972.]]
Parts of the reason why marriages were delayed or avoided were economic. People who entered the workforce during the 1970s and 1980s made less than their fathers did in the 1950s. Fertility rates fell as a result.<ref name="Macunovich-2015" /> The rise in the number of cohabitating couples was also a factor. These couples claimed [[cohabitation]] helped them assess the suitability of a mate before marriage.<ref name="Kalmijn-1994">{{Cite journal|last=Kalmijn|first=Matthijs|date=September 1994|title=Assortative Mating by Cultural and Economic Occupational Status|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230542|journal=American Journal of Sociology|publisher=University of Chicago Press|volume=100|issue=2|pages=422–52|doi=10.1086/230542|s2cid=131770740|access-date=March 3, 2021|archive-date=February 21, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220221141443/https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230542|url-status=live}}</ref>

In Italy, divorce was legalized in 1970 and confirmed by referendum in 1974. Abortion went through the same process in 1978 and 1981, respectively.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" /> In the Canadian province of Quebec, the birth rate fell considerably during the 1960s and 1970s as the influence of the Catholic Church declined.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996b" />

While sociologists had known for a long time that humans tend to select mates of the same ethnicity, social class, personality traits, and educational level, a phenomenon known as [[Human mating strategies#Assortative mating|assortative mating]], during the 1970s and 1980s, an even stronger correlation between the educational levels of a married couple was observed in the United States. In fact, both the age at (first) marriage and the amount of time spent in school increased in the 1970s. Whereas in the past women had typically looked for men of high social status while men had not, by the late twentieth-century, men also looked for women of high earning potential, resulting in an even more pronounced educational and economic assortative mating. More generally, higher rates of university attendance and workforce participation by women affected the marital expectations of both sexes in that both men and women became more symmetrical in what they desired in a mate. The share of marriages in which both spouses were of the same educational level rose monotonically from 47% in 1960 to 53% by the mid- to late-1980s. Similarly, the share of marriages in which both spouses differ by at most one level of schooling increased from 83% in 1940 to 88% by the 1980s.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mare|first=Robert D.|date=February 1991|title=Five Decades of Educational Assortative Mating|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=56|issue=1|pages=15–32|doi=10.2307/2095670|jstor=2095670}}</ref>

Part of the reason why people increasingly married their socioeconomic and educational peers was economic in nature. Innovations that became commercially available in the late twentieth century such as the washing machine and frozen food reduced the amount of time people needed to spend on housework, which diminished the importance of domestic skills.<ref>{{Cite news|date=September 21, 2017|title=Marital choices are exacerbating household income inequality|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/09/21/marital-choices-are-exacerbating-household-income-inequality|access-date=December 20, 2020|archive-date=December 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201207080341/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/09/21/marital-choices-are-exacerbating-household-income-inequality|url-status=live}}</ref> Moreover, it was no longer possible for a couple with one spouse having no more than a high-school diploma to earn about the national average; on the other hand, couples both of whom had at least a bachelor's degree could expect to make a significant amount above the national average. People thus had a clear economic incentive to seek out a mate with at least as high a level of education in order to maximize their potential income. A societal outcome of this was that as household gender equality improved because women had more choices, income inequality widened.<ref>{{Cite news|date=February 8, 2014|title=Sex, brains and inequality|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/02/08/sex-brains-and-inequality|access-date=December 20, 2020|archive-date=December 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201132501/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/02/08/sex-brains-and-inequality|url-status=live}}</ref>

== In midlife ==

=== Economic power ===
By the early 2000s, the Baby Boomers reached middle age and were starting to save for retirement, though not necessarily enough. Seeking to increase their income and thus savings, many started investing, pushing interest rates to the floor. Borrowing became so cheap that some investors made rather risky decisions in order to get better returns. Financial analysts call this the "seeking yield" problem. But even the United States was not enough to absorb all these investments, so the capital flowed overseas, helping to fuel the considerable economic growth of various developing countries.<ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> 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 [[Marketing|marketers]], who reinforced a sense of generational distinctiveness".<ref name="Gillon">Gillon, Steve (2004) ''Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation Ever, and How It Changed America'', Free Press, "Introduction", {{ISBN|978-0-7432-2947-0}}</ref>

This is supported by the articles of the late 1940s identifying the increasing number of babies as an economic boom, such as a 1948 ''[[Newsweek]]'' article whose title proclaimed "Babies Mean Business",<ref>{{Cite web|date=November 26, 2005|title=Population: Babies Mean Business - Boomers At 60 - MSNBC.com|url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9925897/site/newsweek/|access-date=December 31, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051126200640/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9925897/site/newsweek/ |archive-date=November 26, 2005 }}</ref> or a 1948 ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine article called "Baby Boom".<ref>"Baby Boom", [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,856041,00.html ''Time'', February 9, 1948] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823174858/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,856041,00.html |date=August 23, 2013 }}. Retrieved January 26, 2007.</ref>

From 1979 to 2007, those receiving the highest one percentile of incomes saw their already large incomes increase by 278% while those in the middle at the 40th–60th percentiles saw a 35% increase. Since 1980, after the vast majority of Baby Boomer college goers graduated, the cost of college has been increased by over 600% (inflation-adjusted).<ref>{{cite web|last=Planes|first=Alex|date=June 29, 2013|title=How the Baby Boomers Destroyed America's Future|url=https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/06/29/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-americas-future.aspx|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130710193649/https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/06/29/how-the-baby-boomers-destroyed-americas-future.aspx|archive-date=July 10, 2013|access-date=April 6, 2018|website=The Motley Fool}}</ref>

After the CCP opened up their nation's economy in the late 1970s, because so many Baby Boomers did not have access to higher education, they were simply left behind as the Chinese economy grew enormously thanks to said reforms.<ref name="Woodruff-2016" />

=== Family values ===
[[File:Tony Martin Cyd Charisse and family 1956.JPG|thumb|Nuclear families such as this one (pictured 1956) were in retreat by the last third of the twentieth century.]]
Among Americans aged 50 and up, the divorce rate per 1,000 married persons went from 5 in 1990 to 10 in 2015; that among those in the 65 and higher age group tripled to 6 per 1,000 during the same period. Marriage instability in early adulthood contributed to their high rate of divorce. For comparison, the divorce rate for that same period for people aged 25 to 39 went from 30 down to 24, and those aged 40 to 49 increased from 18 to 21 per 1,000 married persons.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Stepler|first=Renee|date=March 9, 2017|title=Led by Baby Boomers, divorce rates climb for America's 50+ population|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/09/led-by-baby-boomers-divorce-rates-climb-for-americas-50-population/|access-date=November 10, 2020|website=Pew Research Center|archive-date=November 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107223832/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/09/led-by-baby-boomers-divorce-rates-climb-for-americas-50-population/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Because the Baby Boomers came of age during a time of reliable contraception and legal abortion, their children—the Millennials—were wanted and planned. Boomers typically had fewer children than previous cohorts and invested more in each child. By the 1980s and 1990s, parenting in the United States had become more competitive.<ref name="Twenge-2023b2">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |author-link=Jean Twenge |title=Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Silents—and What The Mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 5: Millennials}}</ref>

Among Frenchwomen born in the early 1960s, only a third had at least three children. Yet they were responsible for more than half of the next generation because so many of their contemporaries had just one or even none at all. In the United States, one-fifth of women born in the 1950s ended their fertile years without giving birth. 17% of women from the Baby Boom Generation had only one child each and were responsible for only 8% of the next generation. On the other hand, 11% of Baby Boomer women gave birth to at least four children each, for a grand total of one-quarter of the Millennial generation. Those who had many children were likely religious (especially practicing Christians) while those who [[Voluntary childlessness|chose to remain childless]] were often members of countercultural or feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Longman|first=Phillip|date=October 20, 2009|title=The Return of Patriarchy|url=https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy/|access-date=November 1, 2020|website=Foreign Policy|archive-date=February 22, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200222054139/https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Due to the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s, one-child households have become the norm in China, leading to rapid population aging, especially in the cities where the costs of living are much higher than in the countryside.<ref name="French-2020">{{Cite news|last=French|first=Howard|date=June 2020|title=China's Twilight Years|work=The Atlantic|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-twilight-years/480768/|url-status=live|access-date=August 13, 2020|archive-date=August 12, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200812214634/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-twilight-years/480768/}}</ref>

=== Attitude towards religion ===
In the United States, radical activists of the 1960s prompted a backlash by religious leaders, who advocated a return to basic "family values". Evangelical Christians grew considerably in numbers in the 1970s. This movement became politically active, resulting in the fusion between [[Christian fundamentalism]] and [[neoconservatism]] in the late 1970s and 1980s and the election of [[Ronald Reagan]] as president.<ref name="Suri-2009" />

In 1993, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine reported on the religious affiliations of Baby Boomers. Citing [[Wade Clark Roof]], a [[sociologist]] at the [[University of California]] at [[Santa Barbara, California|Santa Barbara]], the articles stated that about 42% of Baby Boomers had already left formal religion, 33% had never strayed from church, and 25% 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]]."<ref>[[Richard Ostling|Ostling, Richard N.]], "The Church Search", April 5, 1993 [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,978164,00.html ''Time'' article retrieved 2007-01-27] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130813082538/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,978164,00.html |date=August 13, 2013 }}</ref>

== In later years ==

=== Work and retirement ===
Baby boomers started entering retirement in the mid-2000s and have already begun withdrawing their investments. Any economic activities that depend on the cheap capital courtesy of the Baby Boomers will cease to be.<ref name="Zeihan-2016" /> From a demographic point of view, the aging of the American workforce is inevitable due to the sheer number of the Baby Boomers.<ref name="Industry Week-2019">{{Cite news |date=July 24, 2019 |title=Can Gen Z Save Manufacturing from the 'Silver Tsunami'? |work=Industry Week |url=https://www.industryweek.com/talent/can-gen-z-save-manufacturing-silver-tsunami |access-date=July 27, 2019 |archive-date=September 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220922012328/https://www.industryweek.com/talent/can-gen-z-save-manufacturing-silver-tsunami |url-status=live }}</ref> Economists expected the United States to face a labor crunch in the 2010s as more and more Baby Boomers retired.<ref name="Cassella-2022">{{Cite news |last=Cassella |first=Megan |date=September 2, 2022 |title=The Labor Shortage Will Get Worse and May Last for Decades |work=Barron's |url=https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/labor-market-jobs-shortage-economy-51662147179 |access-date=September 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20220903092034/https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/labor-market-jobs-shortage-economy-51662147179 |archive-date=September 3, 2022}}</ref> However, in 2018, a large portion of the older Baby Boomers (65–72 years of age) in the United States remained active in the labor force (29%), compared to the Silent Generation (21%) and the Greatest Generation (19%) when they were the same age, the Pew Research Center found by analyzing official labor statistics. The labor participation rate of women aged 65 to 72 in 2018 was 25% and of men of the same age group was 35%. This trend follows from the general expectation of Americans to work after the age of 65,<ref name="Fry-2019" /> as life expectancy is higher than for previous generations.<ref name=":4">{{Cite news |last=Adamczyk |first=Alicia |date=April 4, 2024 |title=The new retirement is no retirement: Baby boomers are keeping jobs well into their 60s and 70s because they ‘like going to work’ |url=https://fortune.com/2024/04/04/unretirement-baby-boomers-workplace-shift/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20240404165249/https://fortune.com/2024/04/04/unretirement-baby-boomers-workplace-shift/ |archive-date=April 4, 2024 |access-date=October 13, 2024 |work=Fortune}}</ref> The Baby Boomers who chose to remain in the work force after the age of 65 are mostly university graduates, whites, and residents of the big cities. That the Boomers maintained a relatively high labor participation rate made economic sense because the longer they postpone retirement, the more Social Security benefits they could claim, once they finally retire.<ref name="Fry-2019">{{Cite web|last=Fry|first=Richard|date=July 24, 2019|title=Baby Boomers are staying in the labor force at rates not seen in generations for people their age|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/24/baby-boomers-us-labor-force/|access-date=November 10, 2020|website=Pew Research Center|archive-date=November 11, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111211101/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/24/baby-boomers-us-labor-force/|url-status=live}}</ref> Many of these Boomers work past the age of retirement not because they cannot afford to retire, but because they enjoy their work.<ref name=":4" /> Large numbers prefer semi-retirement arrangements or flexible work schedules.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sciubba |first=Jennifer D. |date=November 18, 2022 |title=The Global Population Is Aging. Is Your Business Prepared? |work=Harvard Business Review |url=https://hbr.org/2022/11/the-global-population-is-aging-is-your-business-prepared |access-date=April 1, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20221119152030/https://hbr.org/2022/11/the-global-population-is-aging-is-your-business-prepared |archive-date=November 19, 2022}}</ref> There is an ongoing shift away from pension plans in favor of [[401(k)]] or similar options, which do not mandate retirement at a certain age.<ref name="Peck-2023">{{Cite news |last=Peck |first=Emily |date=December 14, 2023 |title=More Americans over 65 are working — here's why |work=Axios |url=https://www.axios.com/2023/12/14/older-american-adults-working-wages-economy |access-date=December 18, 2023}}</ref> Among the Boomers who have retired, a significant portion opts to live in the suburbs, where the Millennials are also moving to in large numbers as they have children of their own. These confluent trends increase the level of economic activities in the American suburbs.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Hart|first=Kim|date=September 25, 2019|title=Welcome to the "hipsturbia" era|work=Axios|url=https://www.axios.com/hipsturbia-millennials-suburbs-cities-cost-of-living-593c6fa4-8322-4d96-92e4-acbe47c63436.html|access-date=March 11, 2021|archive-date=March 6, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210306052002/https://www.axios.com/hipsturbia-millennials-suburbs-cities-cost-of-living-593c6fa4-8322-4d96-92e4-acbe47c63436.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Moreover, during the late 2010s, Millennials and seniors in the U.S. were driving up demand for affordable housing outside the major cities; to prevent another housing bubble, banks and regulators have restricted lending to filter out speculators and those with bad credit.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Guerin|first=Jessica|date=March 26, 2019|title=Millennials, seniors are fleeing cities in search of affordable housing|work=Housing Wire|url=https://www.housingwire.com/articles/48558-millennials-seniors-are-fleeing-cities-in-search-of-affordable-housing/|access-date=July 29, 2020|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726011448/https://www.housingwire.com/articles/48558-millennials-seniors-are-fleeing-cities-in-search-of-affordable-housing/|url-status=live}}</ref>

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), elders in nations where people typically retire late like Sweden and Switzerland tended to experience memory loss at a rate twice as slow as their counterparts from countries where people usually retire early, such as France. Evidence suggests that those who remain mentally active are more likely to maintain their faculties.<ref name="Gambino-2012">{{Cite web |last=Gambino |first=Megan |date=December 3, 2012 |title=Are You Smarter Than Your Grandfather? Probably Not. |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/ |access-date=October 22, 2020 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |archive-date=September 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927172112/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-you-smarter-than-your-grandfather-probably-not-150402883/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

By the mid-2010s, it has already become apparent that China was facing a serious demographic crisis as the population of retirees boomed while the number of working-age people shrank. This poses serious challenges for any attempts to implement social support for the elderly and imposes constraints on China's future economic prospects.<ref name="French-2020" /> In 2018, about 17.8% of China's population, or around 250 million people, was at least 60 years old. The Central Government has been considering raising the retirement age, like many other countries have done, though this is controversial among the Chinese public, who dislike postponing their pensions. As of 2020, China's retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women working for the government or in other white-collar jobs. But China's demography is such that the nation's pension funds will be "insolvent" by 2035 if current trends continue, according to an official report.<ref>{{Cite news|date=November 20, 2020|title=Plan to raise China's retirement age sparks anger|work=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-society-retirement-idUSKBN2800PN|access-date=December 5, 2020|archive-date=December 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201224907/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-society-retirement-idUSKBN2800PN|url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Work Force Participation Rate by Age Group.webp|thumb|360x360px|In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a number of older workers to retire early.]]
The [[COVID-19 pandemic]] may have spurred some Baby Boomers to exit the workforce. In the United Kingdom, data collected by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in June and July 2020 showed that 6% of those aged 66–70 and 11% of those aged 71 and older who were working immediately before the crisis had retired, half of whom had not previously planned to do so.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Crawford|first1=Rowena|last2=Karjalainen|first2=Heidi|date=September 30, 2020|title=The coronavirus pandemic and older workers|url=https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/15040|access-date=December 3, 2020|website=www.ifs.org.uk|doi=10.1920/BN.IFS.2020.BN0305|isbn=978-1-80103-003-8|s2cid=241802267|archive-date=April 28, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210428152245/https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/15040|url-status=live}}</ref> In the United States, Pew Research Center reported that the number of Baby Boomers in retirement had increased by 2.3 million in 2020 the largest annual increase since the oldest Baby Boomers turned 65 during 2011.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Fry|first=Richard|date=November 9, 2020|title=The pace of Boomer retirements has accelerated in the past year|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/09/the-pace-of-boomer-retirements-has-accelerated-in-the-past-year/|access-date=April 28, 2021|website=Pew Research Center|language=en-US|archive-date=April 28, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210428152243/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/09/the-pace-of-boomer-retirements-has-accelerated-in-the-past-year/|url-status=live}}</ref> This surge in the number of retirees contributed to the labor shortage as the country recovered from the pandemic.<ref name="Cassella-2022" /> In fact, the retiring Boomers contributed to an economic phenomenon dubbed the [[Great Resignation]] of the early 2020s.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" />

Countries facing population aging around the world have accelerated automation in order to cope with labor shortages<ref name="Molina-2021">{{Cite news |last=Molina |first=Brett |date=November 13, 2021 |title=Robot orders by companies surge as labor shortages linger |work=USA Today |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/11/13/robots-orders-companies-labor-shortage/8603677002/ |access-date=April 23, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230423222238/https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/11/13/robots-orders-companies-labor-shortage/8603677002/ |archive-date=April 23, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Ward-Glenton |first=Hannah |date=May 1, 2023 |title=Germany has a plan to tackle a rapidly aging workforce: recruiting robots |work=CNBC |url=https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/01/germany-has-a-plan-to-tackle-a-rapidly-ageing-workforce-recruiting-robots.html |access-date=May 13, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Meacham |first=Sam |date=March 31, 2023 |title=Beijing Welcomes Its New Robot Coworkers: China's Aging Crisis and Automation |url=https://hir.harvard.edu/beijing-welcomes-its-new-robot-coworkers-chinas-aging-crisis-and-automation/ |access-date=May 13, 2023 |website=Harvard International Review}}</ref> and to help care for the elderly.<ref name="The Economist-2019">{{Cite news |date=February 16, 2019 |title=An ageing world needs more resourceful robots |newspaper=The Economist |url=https://www.economist.com/international/2019/02/16/an-ageing-world-needs-more-resourceful-robots |access-date=May 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20210506144958/https://www.economist.com/international/2019/02/16/an-ageing-world-needs-more-resourceful-robots |archive-date=May 6, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Lord |first=Craig |date=December 22, 2022 |title=Conversations with Alexa: How robots are helping Canada's aging population connect |work=Globe and Mail |url=https://globalnews.ca/news/9364652/automation-nation-aging-population-robotics-care-homes/ |access-date=May 13, 2023}}</ref> In general, an aging population and a labor shortage accelerate industrial automation, not just to replace the "missing" workers but also to cut costs,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Dizikes |first=Peter |date=September 15, 2021 |title=Study: As a population gets older, automation accelerates |work=MIT News |url=https://news.mit.edu/2021/aging-workers-automation-0915 |access-date=September 21, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Acemoglu |first1=Daron |last2=Restrepo |first2=Pascual |date=January 2022 |title=Demographics and Automation |journal=The Review of Economic Studies |volume=89 |issue=1 |pages=1–44 |doi=10.1093/restud/rdab031 |hdl-access=free |hdl=1721.1/144423}}</ref> though these technologies still have much room for improvement.<ref name="The Economist-2019" /><ref>{{Cite news |last=Anderson |first=Kenneth |date=January 23, 2014 |title=Robotics and automation, employment, and aging Baby Boomers |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/01/23/robotics-and-automation-employment-and-aging-baby-boomers/ |access-date=May 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230513135243/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/01/23/robotics-and-automation-employment-and-aging-baby-boomers/ |archive-date=May 13, 2023}}</ref>

=== Financial position ===
In the United Kingdom, the rate of home ownership of Baby Boomers was 75% and "the real value of estates passing on death has more than doubled over the past 20 years", according to a 2017 report by the [[Resolution Foundation]]. For this reason, the transfer of wealth between the baby boomers and their children, the millennials, will prove highly beneficial to the latter compared to previous cohorts, especially those who came from high-income families.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Brinded|first=Lianna|date=December 30, 2017|title=Britain's class problem comes down to "assortative mating"|work=Quartz|url=https://qz.com/1168740/resolution-foundation-britains-class-problem-comes-down-to-assortative-mating/|url-status=live|access-date=January 9, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171231111200/https://qz.com/1168740/resolution-foundation-britains-class-problem-comes-down-to-assortative-mating/|archive-date=December 31, 2017}}</ref>

A 2020 paper by economists William G. Gale, Hilary Gelfond, Jason J. Fichtner, and Benjamin H. Harris examines the wealth accumulated by different U.S. demographic cohorts using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. They find that while the Great Recession has diminished the wealth of all age groups in the short run, a longitudinal analysis reveals that older generations, including the baby boomers, have been able to acquire more wealth whereas millennials have gotten poorer overall.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Gale|first1=William G.|last2=Gelfond|first2=Hilary|last3=Fichtner|first3=Jason J.|last4=Harris|first4=Benjamin H.|date=May 2020|title=The Wealth of Generations, With Special Attention to the Millennials|url=https://www.nber.org/papers/w27123|journal=NBER Working Papers|series=Working Paper Series |publisher=National Bureau of Economic Research|doi=10.3386/w27123|s2cid=218961208|access-date=August 26, 2020|archive-date=September 1, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200901202107/https://www.nber.org/papers/w27123|url-status=live|doi-access=free}}</ref> Nevertheless, some American politicians have warned that many senior citizens did not have enough savings for retirement.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Sewell|first=Dan|date=July 13, 2020|title=Millennials and boomers: Pandemic pain, by the generation|work=Associated Press|url=https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-pandemics-virus-outbreak-0a844a99bb56108f5512388234e190e7|access-date=January 5, 2022|archive-date=January 5, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220105190457/https://apnews.com/article/health-us-news-ap-top-news-pandemics-virus-outbreak-0a844a99bb56108f5512388234e190e7|url-status=live}}</ref> A survey found that nearly a third of baby boomer multimillionaires polled in the US would prefer to pass on their [[inheritance]] to [[Charity (practice)|charities]] rather than pass it down to their children. Of these boomers, 57% believed it was important for each generation to earn their own money; 54% believed it was more important to invest in their children while they were growing up.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/06/half-of-baby-boomers-to-leave-inheritance-to-kids|title=50% of Boomers Leave Estates to Kids|website=ABC News|access-date=June 27, 2020|archive-date=July 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200726132213/https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/06/half-of-baby-boomers-to-leave-inheritance-to-kids|url-status=live}}</ref> Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated in 2014 that the '[[silver economy]]' would be worth US$15 trillion in 2020, up from US$8 trillion ten years prior. This dramatic growth is due not just to baby boomers retiring en masse, but also to their spending habits. While previous generations generally preserved their wealth and passed it onto their children, many baby boomers prefer to spend their money on their own long retirement.<ref name="Britnell-2015">{{Cite book|last=Britnell|first=Mark|title=In Search of the Perfect Health System|publisher=Palgrave|year=2015|isbn=978-1-137-49661-4|chapter=Chapter 33: Aging. Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining|author-link=Mark Britnell}}</ref>

=== Leisure and other habits ===
As younger generations move towards getting more of their entertainment via the internet, traditional television has held up better in the leisure time of baby boomers. Research from 2018 into British viewing habits suggested that individuals aged 65 to 74  (mainly older baby boomers) viewed an average of 333 minutes of broadcast TV each day higher than any younger age group and only nine minutes less than in 2010. In the case of younger baby boomers the figures suggested that 55 to 64 year olds consumed an average 277 minutes of broadcast TV each day in 2018 (still higher than any age range their junior) with a sharper decline since 2010 of 44 minutes.<ref>{{Cite web|date=August 7, 2019|title=Media nations: UK 2019|url=https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/160714/media-nations-2019-uk-report.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190917213342/https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/160714/media-nations-2019-uk-report.pdf |archive-date=September 17, 2019 |url-status=live |website=Ofcom}}</ref> In the same year, three main cable news stations in the United States all had average viewer ages' within the Baby boomer range.<ref>{{Cite web|date=January 19, 2018|title=Here's the Median Age of the Typical Cable News Viewer|url=https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-typical-cable-news-viewer/355379/|website=Adweek|access-date=February 27, 2021|archive-date=March 10, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210310111602/https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-typical-cable-news-viewer/355379/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2019, advertising platform Criteo conducted a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers which showed baby boomers were less likely than [[millennials]] to purchase groceries online. Of the baby boomers surveyed, 30 percent said they used some form of online grocery delivery service.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/only-30-percent-of-baby-boomers-use-online-grocery-services|title=Baby boomers are less likely than millennials to order groceries online|last=McNulty|first=Matthew|date=November 13, 2019|website=FOXBusiness|language=en-US|access-date=November 16, 2019|archive-date=November 16, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191116000615/https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/only-30-percent-of-baby-boomers-use-online-grocery-services|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Life expectancy and health ===
[[File:Median age by country, 2016.svg|thumb|420x420px|Median age by country in 2016. Many countries are aging due to rising life expectancy and falling fertility.]]
A 2020 study by sociologist Hui Zheng suggests that early US baby boomers (born between the late-1940s and early-1950s) and middle baby boomers (born between the mid- to late-1950s) had significant cognitive decline at age 50 and over compared to their elders,  though the generations born before and during the Second World War had increasing cognitive scores from one generation to the next when they were at the same age.<ref>{{Cite news |date=August 3, 2020 |title=Baby boomers show concerning decline in cognitive functioning |work=Science Daily |url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803092125.htm |url-status=live |access-date=November 10, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201110204432/https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803092125.htm |archive-date=November 10, 2020}}</ref>

Around the world, people are living longer than ever before. Global life expectancy has increased from 47 years in the 1950s to over 72 years in 2016.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mortality and global health estimates|url=https://www.who.int/data/maternal-newborn-child-adolescent/monitor|access-date=November 3, 2020|website=World Health Organization|language=en|archive-date=January 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210115104602/https://www.who.int/data/maternal-newborn-child-adolescent/monitor|url-status=live}}</ref> As a result, the number of people older than 60 years of age has gone up over the decades, as has their share of the global population. However, the rate of population aging in the developing world is faster than among developed nations. Asia, South America, and the Caribbean are all aging rapidly. Globally, the ratio of the number of working-age people (15–64) to those aged 65 and over—the support ratio—has fallen from 11.75 in 1950 to 8.5 in 2012 and is on course to drop even further in the upcoming decades. These developments will fundamentally change the patterns of consumption in the global economy. The global disease burden will also change, with conditions affecting the elderly, such as [[dementia]], becoming more common.<ref name="Britnell-2015" />

As countries around the world face the problem of a 'boomer dense' population, they find their tax revenues and what they can spend on elderly support in decline. Some countries, such as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, have invested considerable sums of money on a variety of novel medical devices, robotics, and other gadgets to assist the elderly in their sunset years. Others, such as Austria and the Netherlands, have created specialized services for the elderly, among them dementia-friendly villages decorated with items and music from the 1950s and 1960s to help residents feel at home. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India passed legislation to incentivize people to provide more financial support for their elders.<ref name="Britnell-2015" /> In the United States, the sheer number of baby boomers can put a strain on [[Medicare (United States)|Medicare]]. According to the [[American Medical Student Association]], the population of individuals over the age of 65 will increase by 73 percent between 2010 and 2030, meaning one in five Americans will be a senior citizen.<ref>{{Cite web|title=How baby boomers will affect the health care industry in the U.S. {{!}} Carrington.edu|url=http://carrington.edu/blog/medical/baby-boomers-will-affect-health-care-industry-u-s/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170909004907/http://carrington.edu/blog/medical/baby-boomers-will-affect-health-care-industry-u-s/|archive-date=September 9, 2017|access-date=September 8, 2017|website=carrington.edu|date=February 2014|language=en-US}}</ref>

== Political evolution ==
In Europe, the period between the middle to the late twentieth century could be described as an era of mass politics, meaning people were generally loyal to a chosen political party. Political debates were mostly about economic questions, such as wealth redistribution, taxation, jobs, and the role of government. But as countries transitioned from having industrial economies to a post-industrial and globalized world, and as the twentieth century became the twenty-first, topics of political discourse changed to other questions and polarization due to competing values intensified.<ref name="Eatwell-2018">{{Cite book|last1=Eatwell|first1=Roger|title=National Populism – The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy|last2=Goodwin|first2=Matthew|publisher=Pelican Book|year=2018|isbn=978-0-241-31200-1|location=Great Britain|chapter=Chapter 6: De-alignment}}</ref>

Scholars such as [[Ronald Inglehart]] traced the roots of this new 'culture conflict' all the way back to the 1960s, which witnessed the emergence of the Baby Boomers, who were generally university-educated middle-class voters. Whereas their predecessors in the twentieth century—the Lost Generation, the Greatest Generation, and the Silent Generation—had to endure severe poverty and world wars, focused on economic stability or simple survival, the Baby Boomers benefited from an economically secure, if not affluent, upbringing and as such tended to be drawn to 'post-materialist' values. Major topics for political discussion at that time were things like the sexual revolution, civil rights, nuclear weaponry, ethnocultural diversity, environmental protection, European integration, and the concept of 'global citizenship'. Some mainstream parties, especially the social democrats, moved to the left in order to accommodate these voters. In the twenty-first century, supporters of post-materialism lined up behind causes such as LGBT rights, climate change, multiculturalism, and various [[Media activism|political campaigns on social media]]. Inglehart called this the "Silent Revolution". But not everyone approved, giving rise to what Piero Ignazi called the "Silent Counter-Revolution".<ref name="Eatwell-2018" /> The university-educated and non-degree holders have very different upbringing, live very different lives, and as such hold very different values.<ref name="Eatwell-2018c">{{Cite book|last1=Eatwell|first1=Roger|title=National Populism – The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy|last2=Goodwin|first2=Matthew|publisher=Pelican Book|year=2018|isbn=978-0-241-31200-1|location=Great Britain|chapter=Chapter 3: Distrust}}</ref> Education plays a role in this 'culture conflict' as national populism appeals most strongly to those who finished high school but did not graduate from university while the experience of higher education has been shown to be linked to having a socially liberal mindset. Degree holders tend to favor tolerance, individual rights, and group identities whereas non-degree holders lean towards [[conformity]], and maintaining order, customs, and traditions.<ref name="Eatwell-2018b">{{Cite book|last1=Eatwell|first1=Roger|title=National Populism – The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy|last2=Goodwin|first2=Matthew|publisher=Pelican Book|year=2018|isbn=978-0-241-31200-1|location=Great Britain|chapter=Chapter 1: Myths|author-link=Roger Eatwell|author-link2=Matthew Goodwin}}</ref> While the number of university-educated Western voters continues to grow, in many democracies non-degree holders still form a large share of the electorate. According to the OECD, in 2016, the average share of voters between the ages of 25 and 64 without tertiary education in the European Union was 66% of the population. In Italy, it exceeded 80%. In many major democracies, such as France, although the representation of women and ethnic minorities in the corridors of power has increased, the same cannot be said for the working-class and non-degree holders.<ref name="Eatwell-2018c" />

In the United Kingdom, political scientists James Tilley and Geoffrey Evans conducted a longitudinal analysis of the electoral behavior of the same cohort between 1964 and 2010 and found that the average likelihood of a person voting for the right-leaning Conservative Party increased by 0.38% each year. Previous research suggests that aging and key life events—such as seeking employment, marriage, rearing children, and retirement—all make a person more skeptical of change and more conservative.<ref name="Eatwell-2018b" /><ref name="Tilley-2014">{{Cite journal|last1=Tilley|first1=James|last2=Evans|first2=Geoffrey|date=2014|title=Ageing and generational effects on vote choice: Combining cross-sectional and panel data to estimate APC effects|journal=Electoral Studies|volume=33|issue=1|pages=19–27|doi=10.1016/j.electstud.2013.06.007|s2cid=154982446|url=https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:49922ae3-fe8e-4c2d-8e3d-a725542208c0|access-date=August 11, 2022|archive-date=February 3, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203081338/https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:49922ae3-fe8e-4c2d-8e3d-a725542208c0|url-status=live}}</ref>

In the United States, the baby boomers have been described as "the largest and most powerful generation in US history."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Munger |first=Kevin |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/mung20086 |title=Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture |date=2022 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-20086-8 |doi=10.7312/mung20086|jstor=10.7312/mung20086 }}</ref> Even though the Baby Boomers were responsible for the cultural revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, their political views shifted quickly and decisively during the 1980s. This was not because they wanted to reverse the changes they have brought about, but rather because they wanted to preserve the status quo. In fact, the level of support for conservatism among Boomers was higher than older generations when they were at the same age.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> Compared to younger generations coming of age in the early twenty-first century, boomers are more conservative as well.<ref name=":1" /> In addition, especially since the 1970s, working-class voters, who had previously formed the backbone of support for the [[New Deal]] introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, have been turning away from the left-leaning Democratic Party in favor of the right-leaning Republican Party.<ref name="Eatwell-2018" /> As the Democratic Party attempted to make itself friendlier towards the university-educated and women during the 1990s, more blue-collar workers and non-degree holders left.<ref name="Eatwell-2018" />

[[File:US_political_leanings_by_age_(Gallup_2018).png|center|597x597px]]
In 2018, Gallup conducted a survey of almost 14,000 Americans from all 50 states and the District of Columbia aged 18 and over on their political sympathies. They found that overall, younger adults tended to lean liberal while older adults tilted conservative. More specifically, groups with strong conservative leanings included the elderly, residents of the Midwest and the South, and people with some or no college education. Groups with strong liberal leanings were adults with advanced degrees, whereas those with moderate liberal leanings included younger adults (18 to 29 and 30 to 49), women, and residents of the East. Gallup found little variations by income groups compared to the national average. Among people between the ages of 50 and 64—older Generation X and younger Baby Boomers—Gallup found that 23% identified as liberals, 32% as moderates, and 41% as conservatives. Among those aged 65 and over—older Baby Boomers—they found that 22% considered themselves liberals, 30% moderates, and 43% conservatives. (See above.)<ref>{{Cite news|last=Saad|first=Lydia|date=January 8, 2019|title=U.S. Still Leans Conservative, but Liberals Keep Recent Gains|work=Gallup Poll|department=Politics|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/245813/leans-conservative-liberals-keep-recent-gains.aspx|access-date=December 25, 2019|archive-date=December 24, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224032436/https://news.gallup.com/poll/245813/leans-conservative-liberals-keep-recent-gains.aspx|url-status=live}}</ref>

In both Europe and the United States, older voters are the primary support base for the rise of nationalist and populist movements, though there are pockets of support among young people as well.<ref name="Eatwell-2018" /> During the 2010s, a consistent trend in many Western countries is that older people are more likely to vote than their younger countrymen, and they tend to vote for more right-leaning (or conservative) candidates.<ref name="BBC News-2018">{{Cite news|date=January 29, 2018|title=The myth of the 2017 'youthquake' election|work=BBC News|department=UK|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42747342|access-date=December 15, 2019|archive-date=December 21, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191221111935/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-42747342|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Sopel-2019">{{Cite news|last=Sopel|first=Jon|date=December 15, 2019|title=Will UK provide light bulb moment for US Democrats?|work=BBC News|department=US & Canada|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50785442|access-date=December 15, 2019|archive-date=December 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191215041939/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50785442|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Kight-2019">{{Cite news|last=Kight|first=Stef W.|date=December 14, 2019|title=Young people are outnumbered and outvoted by older generations|work=Axios|url=https://www.axios.com/2020-election-youth-vote-gen-z-895c7c4b-3ee2-4068-8b83-96178249d3f0.html|access-date=December 24, 2019|archive-date=December 24, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224214437/https://www.axios.com/2020-election-youth-vote-gen-z-895c7c4b-3ee2-4068-8b83-96178249d3f0.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Due to the continued aging of these countries and the long life expectancy of their voters, right-leaning parties will continue to have a strong base of support.<ref name="Eatwell-2018b" /><ref name="Tilley-2014" />

When the 'Golden Age' of economic boom finally came to a grinding halt in the 1970s, various reforms were introduced. High-skilled workers earned even more than before whereas low-skilled workers saw their fortunes melt away and consequently became dependent on welfare. This created a schism between the two groups, with the upper-end of the working class now supporting the political Right upon realizing that it was they, viewing themselves as hard-working taxpayers, who were the ones financing welfare, something they would rather do without except in cases of emergency. The fact that some governments incautiously made such welfare programs quite generous during the boom years exacerbated resentment for 'the underclass'. Public housing complexes came to be viewed as nothing more than residences for those who were socially problematic and chronically dependent on welfare.<ref name="Hobsbawn-1996" />

==Generational milestones==
{{See also|Timeline of the Cold War}}<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">
File:The_Beatles_arrive_at_JFK_Airport.jpg|The Beatles arrive at the [[John F. Kennedy International Airport]], New York City (1964).
File:Land_on_the_Moon_7_21_1969-repair.jpg|A girl reads a newspaper reporting that man has [[Apollo 11|landed on the Moon]] (1969).
File:Peace_pipe_offered_and_refused.jpg|Some attendees of the [[Woodstock|Woodstock Music and Arts Festival]], in [[Bethel, New York]] (1969)
File:The_Reagans_waving_from_the_limousine_during_the_Inaugural_Parade_1981.jpg|President-elect Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, wave to the crowd during the [[United States presidential inauguration|Inaugural Parade]] (1981).
</gallery>According to journalist and satirist [[P. J. O'Rourke]], "You’re not a baby boomer if you don’t have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a [[Watergate]]."<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> In a 1985 study of U.S. 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 you?"<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Schuman|first1=Howard|last2=Scott|first2=Jacqueline|date=June 1989|title=Generations and Collective Memory|journal=American Sociological Review|volume=54|issue=3|pages=359–381|doi=10.2307/2095611|jstor=2095611|hdl=2027.42/91763|hdl-access=free}}</ref> For the baby boomers, the results were divided into two groups:
* Baby Boomer cohort number one (born 1946–1955), the cohort who epitomized the cultural change of the 1960s
** Memorable events: the early Cold War (and associated [[Red Scare]]); the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]; the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.; political unrest; the [[Apollo program]]; the War in Vietnam; sexual liberation; drug experimentation; the civil rights movement; environmentalism; the second wave of feminism; and the Woodstock Festival.
* [[Generation Jones|Baby Boomer cohort number two]] (born 1956–1964), the cohort who came of age in the "malaise" years of the 1970s
** Memorable events: the Cold War; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the assassinations of political icons; the War in Vietnam; the Moon-landing mission; the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation; the lowering of the legal drinking age to 18 in many states from 1970 to 1976 (restored to 21 in the mid-1980s as a result of congressional lobbying by [[Mothers Against Drunk Driving]] (MADD)); the [[1973 oil crisis]]; [[Stagflation of the 1970s|stagflation]]; President Jimmy Carter's re-imposition of registration for the draft; the Iranian hostage crisis; the election of Ronald Reagan as president; and [[Live Aid]].

== Legacy ==
{{Quote box
| quote = "For better or for worse, the world today is committed to accelerating change: radical, wrenching, erosive of both traditions and old values. Its Inheritors have grown up with rapid change, are better prepared to accommodate it than any in history, indeed embrace change as a virtue in itself. With his skeptical yet humanistic outlook, his disdain for fanaticism and his scorn for the spurious, the Man of the Year suggests that he will infuse the future with a new sense of morality, a transcendent and contemporary ethic that could infinitely enrich the ’empty society.'"|
| author = ''Time''<ref name="Time Magazine 2019" />
| align = right
| width = 28%
| quoted = 1
}}In recognition of the historical significance of this demographic cohort, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine designated the Baby Boomers "[[Time Person of the Year|Man of the Year]]" in 1966.<ref name="beyond" /> The face most prominently seen on the cover representing the generation, called "The Inheritors" by ''Time'',  was that of [[Thomas M. McLaughlin]], an alumnus of Yale University and a decorated U.S. Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam.<ref>{{cite news |date=6 January 1967 |title=Man Of The Year: The Inheritor |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,843150-1,00.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221212125621/https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,843150-1,00.html |archive-date=December 12, 2022 |access-date=12 December 2022 |newspaper=Time}}</ref><ref name="Time Magazine 2019">{{cite news |last1=Waxman |first1=Olivia B. |date=December 11, 2019 |title=When Young Americans Were ''Time''{{'s}} Person of the Year, This Man's Face Helped Inspire a 'Portrait of a Generation' |url=https://time.com/5744019/baby-boomer-man-of-the-year/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230824124649/https://time.com/5744019/baby-boomer-man-of-the-year/ |archive-date=August 24, 2023 |access-date=24 August 2023 |work=Time}}</ref> Due to their number, the Baby Boomers have been a dominant factor in American life since the time they were born.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> While they were being born and growing up from the late 1940s and 1960s, American culture was centered around child-rearing. As young adults during the late 1960s and 1970s, the Boomers instigated a period of serious social and political turbulence.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> While building their careers during the 1980s and 1990s, the Baby Boomers insisted on stability. When the youngest among them reached retirement in the early 2020s, they left behind a labor shortage.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /> In fact, retiring Baby Boomers were a contributing factor to the [[Great Resignation]].<ref name="Zeihan-2022">{{Cite book |last=Zeihan |first=Peter |title=The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization |publisher=Harper Business |year=2022 |isbn=978-0-063-23047-7 |location=New York |pages=93 |chapter=Section I: The End of More}}</ref> As Claire Raines points out in ''Beyond Generation X'' (1997), "never before in history had youth been so idealized as they were at this moment." According to her, when [[Generation&nbsp;X]] came along, it had much to live up to.<ref name="beyond">{{cite book|last=Raines|first=Claire|title=Beyond Generation&nbsp;X|year=1997|publisher=Crisp Publications|isbn=978-1-56052-449-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Marijuana Timeline {{!}} Busted - America's War On Marijuana {{!}} FRONTLINE {{!}} PBS|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html|access-date=February 21, 2021|website=www.pbs.org|archive-date=July 9, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140709101022/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Although the fortunes of their nation may wax and wane, as individuals, American Baby Boomers have been quite ambitious in what they expect from life.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Brands |first=H. W. |title=American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 |publisher=Penguin Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-594-2-02629 |chapter=15: Still Dreaming}}</ref> In spite of the fact that the seeds of expressive individualism had already been sown by the Silent Generation, it was the Baby Boomers who pushed for the social and cultural changes that echoed down the decades, many of which taken for granted by subsequent cohorts.<ref name="Twenge-2023b" /><ref name=":2" /> For instance, young women in the 2000s could pursue careers their grandmothers could only dream about, and young people of color could take advantage of opportunities not accessible to their ancestors.<ref name=":2" />

While older Boomers who attended colleges and universities were interested in learning new things, later Boomers and Generation X were more likely to say they wanted to make more money. In fact, by the late 2010s, this has become the dominant justification for higher education. Later Boomers and Generation X were also the first group to treat higher education as a commodity and to consider themselves as customers who were entitled to high grades.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Twenge |first=Jean |title=Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X Boomers, and Silents—and what They mean for America's Future |publisher=Atria Books |year=2023 |isbn=978-1-9821-8161-1 |location=New York |chapter=Chapter 4: Generation X}}</ref> Thanks to the Baby Boomers, materialism became the norm in American culture by the time Generation X came of age.<ref name=":3" />

The experimentation with marijuana and psychedelic drugs spearheaded by some of the baby boomers in their youth has continued to present day, leading in some countries to re-evaluation of these substances as useful medicinal and  psychotherapeutic tools.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Siddique|first=Ashik|date=April 23, 2013|title=Psychedelic Drug Use in United States as Common Now as in 1960s Generation|work=Medical Daily|url=https://www.medicaldaily.com/psychedelic-drug-use-united-states-common-now-1960s-generation-245218|access-date=February 7, 2021|archive-date=February 3, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210203023935/https://www.medicaldaily.com/psychedelic-drug-use-united-states-common-now-1960s-generation-245218|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=Marijuana Timeline|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html|access-date=March 2, 2021|website=PBS Frontline|archive-date=July 9, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140709101022/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Just as Paul Erlich's ''[[The Population Bomb]]'' (1968) was released, feminist movements were spreading all across the Western world. As access to education improved and contraception became readily available, women during the 1970s and 1980s became a lot more willing to delay or eschew marriage and to reduce the number of children, if any, they had. Because so many women during this period seized the opportunity to control their fertility, they have had a significant impact on the trajectory of human history.<ref name= Safi/>

This intentional reduction of fertility occurred not just in Western countries, but also in places like India and Iran. Consequently, the predictions of Erlich failed to match reality. This development paved the way for the phenomenon of population aging observed in many countries around the world in the early twenty-first century.<ref name= Safi>{{Cite news|last=Safi|first=Michael|date=July 25, 2020|title=All the people: what happens if humanity's ranks start to shrink?|work=The Guardian|department=World|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/25/all-the-people-what-happens-if-humanitys-ranks-start-to-shrink|url-status=live|access-date=August 19, 2020|archive-date=August 19, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819050751/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/25/all-the-people-what-happens-if-humanitys-ranks-start-to-shrink}}</ref> Geopolitical analyst [[Peter Zeihan]] predicted that this demographic trend would result in "accelerating population falls unparalleled in speed and depth by any peacetime event in human history with the singular exception of the [[Black Death|Black Plague]]." He noted, however, that baby boomers in Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus, Ireland, Iceland, and the United States had enough children so that their nations were not aging as rapidly as other developed and even some developing countries.<ref name="Zeihan-2016" />

According to the United Nations, between 2015 and 2040, East Asia would be the world's fastest aging region on Earth, with a forecasted increase in median age of 9.5 years. U.N. data also shows that the region has been aging faster than the global average since the mid-1970s. On one hand, this reflects dramatic improvements in standards of living compared to the 1960s; on the other hand, many East Asian polities, such as South Korea, are facing a demographic time bomb.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Kopf|first=Dan|date=November 9, 2017|title=One region is growing older a lot faster than anywhere else in the world|work=Quartz|url=https://qz.com/1123044/which-countries-are-growing-oldest-the-fastest/|url-status=live|access-date=March 4, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403050707/https://qz.com/1123044/which-countries-are-growing-oldest-the-fastest/|archive-date=April 3, 2019}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|1950s|1960s|History|Society}}
* [[Beatnik]]
* [[Me generation]]
* [[Generation#List of named generations|List of generations]]
* [[Population boom]]
* [[Transgenerational design]]
* [[Nano gap]]
* [[OK boomer]]

== Notes ==
<references group="note" />

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book|last=Betts|first=David|title=Breaking The Gaze|year=2013|publisher=Kindle|isbn=978-1-4943-0007-4 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book|last=Green|first=Brent|title=Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future|year=2010|publisher=[[iUniverse]]|location=Bloomington, IN|isbn=978-1-4502-5533-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H8KPmAEACAAJ&q=editions:EGFKMerPE6kC |ref=none}}
* {{cite book|last=Foot|first=David K.|title=Boom Bust & Echo--How to Profit From the Coming Demographic Shift|year=1996|publisher=Macfarlane, Walter & Ross|location=Toronto, Canada|isbn=978-0-921912-97-2|url=https://archive.org/details/boombustechohowt00foot |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |first=Bruce Cannon |last=Gibney |title=A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America |year=2017 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-316-39578-6}}

==External links==
* ''[https://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/timestopics/series/booming/index.html Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages]'' - ''[[The New York Times]]'' series about baby boomers
* [http://www.bonza.com.au/ Baby boomers of New Zealand and Australia]
* ''[https://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episodes/boomer-revolution Boomer Revolution]'', CBC documentary
* Population pyramids of [https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/28-eu-population-2020-01-scaled.jpg the EU-27 without France] and of [https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/27-france-population-2020-01-scaled.jpg France in 2020]. [[Peter Zeihan|Zeihan]] on Geopolitics.

{{s-start}}
{{succession box
| before = [[Silent Generation]]<br />1928 &ndash; 1945
| title = Baby Boomers
| years = 1946 &ndash; 1964
| after = [[Generation X]]<br />1965 &ndash; 1980
}}
{{s-end}}

{{Generation|state=expanded}}
{{Time Persons of the Year 1951–1975}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Baby boomers| ]]
[[Category:20th century]]
[[Category:Cultural generations]]
[[Category:Demographics of Australia]]
[[Category:Demographics of Canada]]
[[Category:Demographics of the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Demographics of the United States]]
[[Category:1960s neologisms]]