I think boomers were real, that was something that happened with a clear cause and a huge bubble worked its way through the age distribution like a big rat through a snake. Every other "generation" is just arbitrary intervals.
Even boomers is mostly referring to well-off white people (and some people of other backgrounds) who have reaped the rewards of the emergence of the American Empire as the global superpower. It's really a label about wealth, not just being born somewhat soon after WWII.
The bubble of population growth ie the "boom" in "boomer" is part of what contributed to their wealth. The surplus labor of boomers in their youth did not need to support as significant a population of older generations who were less numerous to start off with and additionally lost a great many as casualties of war.
As boomers age the reverse becomes true and the new generations must support an enormous elderly population of boomers.
This intersects with the many other factors that we are all familiar with on this forum.
I think boomers were real, that was something that happened with a clear cause and a huge bubble worked its way through the age distribution like a big rat through a snake. Every other "generation" is just arbitrary intervals.
Even boomers is mostly referring to well-off white people (and some people of other backgrounds) who have reaped the rewards of the emergence of the American Empire as the global superpower. It's really a label about wealth, not just being born somewhat soon after WWII.
The bubble of population growth ie the "boom" in "boomer" is part of what contributed to their wealth. The surplus labor of boomers in their youth did not need to support as significant a population of older generations who were less numerous to start off with and additionally lost a great many as casualties of war. As boomers age the reverse becomes true and the new generations must support an enormous elderly population of boomers. This intersects with the many other factors that we are all familiar with on this forum.
My parents are technically boomers, even though they were born in 1962 and 1963, a bit far after the war to be part of a post-war baby boom.
That too -- even the upper endpoint of that interval is arbitrary.