The first recorded use of the term baby boomer appeared in a January 1963 Daily Press article by Leslie J. Nason, describing a massive surge of college enrollments approaching as the oldest boomers came of age. This demographic cohort, born between 1946 and 1964, represents the largest population group in human history, with over 71.6 million people in the United States alone as of 2019. The term itself was coined by newspaper reporter Sylvia F. Porter in a the 4th of May 1951, New York Post column, which noted an increase of 2,357,000 in the U.S. population from 1940 to 1950. These children were born during a period of unprecedented optimism following World War II, when economic prosperity and technological progress seemed to guarantee a better future. Their childhoods were marked by the Marshall Plan rebuilding Western Europe, the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and the rapid expansion of public education systems worldwide. The baby boomers grew up in a world where full employment was the norm, unemployment in Western Europe stood at just 1.5% by the 1960s, and life expectancy increased by seven years between the 1930s and 1960s. This generation would become the parents of Generation X and Millennials, fundamentally reshaping the social and political landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Education And The Flynn Effect
The number of university students worldwide more than doubled in the 1970s, transforming higher education from an elite privilege into a mass phenomenon. In the United States, the number of students in higher learning institutions grew from 2.6 million in 1950 to 12 million by 1980, creating unprecedented competition for academic positions. This expansion led to the Flynn effect, where James R. Flynn discovered in the 1980s that IQ scores were increasing significantly between the early 1930s and late 1970s, with younger cohorts scoring higher than their elders. The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered massive reforms in American science education, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordering major changes and pouring enormous sums into research and development. The Berkeley Physics Course, including Electricity and Magnetism by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell, became a standard text that remains in print today. In France, the Lichnerowicz Commission attempted to reform mathematics education by teaching set theory and abstract algebra to all students, regardless of their career prospects, but the commission was disbanded in 1973 after facing criticism from mathematicians and educators. Meanwhile, in China, post-secondary education was almost completely abolished during the Cultural Revolution, with only 48,000 university students remaining in 1970, creating a severe disadvantage for the baby boom cohort when capitalist reforms were introduced in the late 1970s. The rise of university campuses became a culturally and politically novel phenomenon that would usher in the political turbulence of the late 1960s around the world.
In May 1968, French youths launched massive protests demanding social and educational reforms, while labor unions simultaneously initiated a general strike, prompting countermeasures by the government that led to Charles de Gaulle stepping down as president in 1969. This period of cultural rebellion became a common feature in urbanized and industrialized societies, both East and West, as young people felt a sense of alienation and sought to assert their own individuality, freedom, and authenticity. The Central Intelligence Agency reported to the President that counterculture was a highly disruptive force not just in the nation but also abroad, undermining societies from U.S. allies like West Germany and Japan to Communist nations like Poland and the Soviet Union. Long-time director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover suspected that students' protests and counterculture were instigated by Communist agents, though the CIA subsequently found no evidence of foreign subversion. The counterculture came with an entire pharmacopeia, including marijuana, amphetamines, magic mushrooms, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), synthesized in 1938 by chemist Albert Hoffmann and promoted in the 1960s by psychologist Timothy Leary. The Woodstock Festival in August 1969 drew huge crowds despite bad weather and a general lack of facilities, with actual attendance figures difficult to determine even with aerial photography. The so-called Hippie Trail probably started in the mid-1950s, as expeditions of wealthy tourists and students traveled from Western Europe to Asia, seeking Eastern religions and mysticism, with many young and naive Western tourists falling victim to scammers, tricksters, and even murderers.
Protests And Political Turmoil
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the 1950s was a period of strong economic growth and prosperity, but by the 1960s there was a general feeling of stagnation that stimulated the creation of the Extra-parliamentary Opposition, with one of the most prominent activists being Rudi Dutschke, who declared the long march through the institutions. The Red Army Faction, a militant Marxist group most active in the 1970s and 1980s, believed the West German economic and political systems to be inhumane and fascist, looting stores, robbing banks, and kidnapping or assassinating West German businessmen, politicians, and judges until its reign of terror lasted until around 1993. In the United States, protests against American participation in the War in Vietnam shook college campuses and cities across the nation, with draft evasion growing and many taking to the streets to demand the abolition of conscription. Some of these student demonstrations grew violent, with fatal consequences, and in counties that saw riots, the Republican Party was able to attract new votes by appealing to the desire for security and stability. In Mexico, authorities deployed security forces to quell a youth protest in preparation for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. 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, resulting in general mayhem before Mao eventually opted to deploy the People's Liberation Army against his own Red Guards to restore public order. Despite the radical rhetoric, most governments proved rather stable during this turbulent period, and many student radicals went on to have successful careers working for the government after leaving radical groups.
The Malaise Era And Economic Shifts
The younger half of the baby boom generation, known as Generation Jones, came of age during the malaise years of the mid-1970s to early 1980s, facing events such as the Watergate scandal, the 1973-1975 recession, the 1973 oil crisis, and the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. By the mid-1980s, younger boomers could only expect to make a third of what their fathers made as new entrants to the labor force, as automation started eating away jobs at the low to medium skill levels. The collective GDP of industrialized nations continued to grow until the early 1990s, so much so that they became much wealthier and more productive by that date, yet 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, with youth unemployment over 20% in the United Kingdom, more than 40% in Spain, and around 46% in Norway. The baby boomers who chose to remain in the workforce after the age of 65 tended to be university graduates, whites, and residents of big cities, maintaining a relatively high labor participation rate because the longer they postpone retirement, the more Social Security benefits they could claim once they finally retire. In 2018, 29% of people aged 65-72 in the United States remained active in the labor force, following the general expectation of Americans to work after the age of 65. The onset of recession typically occurred within a few years of a peak in the rate of change of the young-adult population, and the recession of the mid-1970s took place shortly after older boomers' growth in the late 1960s.
Global Demographic Transitions
China's baby-boom cohort is the largest in the world, with people who experienced the Great Famine of China from 1958 to 1961 being noticeably shorter than those who did not, as the famine killed up to 30 million people and massively reduced China's economic output. The Great Leap Forward, introduced by Chairman Mao Zedong, saw steel production triple between 1958 and 1960 from flimsy household furnaces, but fall to a level lower than that at the start of the Great Leap Forward by 1962. By the mid-2010s, many Chinese neighborhoods were disproportionately filled with the elderly, whom the Chinese themselves referred to 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, creating a stark economic trade-off between social welfare programs and military spending. Japan's population peaked in 2017, with forecasts suggesting that the elderly will make up 35% of Japan's population by 2040, and as of 2018, Japan was already a super-aged society with 27% of its people being older than 65 years. The median age in Japan was 47 years in 2017, with a total fertility rate of 1.43 in 2017, one of the lowest in the world. South Korea retains one of the world's lowest fertility rates, with a total fertility rate of less than 1 child per woman, despite many efforts by the government to increase the national fertility rate through subsidies.
Cultural Icons And Social Change
In the United States, a new doll named Barbie Millicent Roberts was brought to market in 1959, proving to be an icon of girlhood, while the television set quickly became a major source of entertainment for families, with soap operas migrating from radio to television in the 1950s and dealing with social issues such as abortion, race relations, and sexual politics. Comic books were blamed for the rise in juvenile delinquency, culminating in the book Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham in 1954, which caused the creation of the Comics Code Authority to regulate and curb violence in comics, marking the start of the Silver Age of American comics. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, attracted the attention of adolescent readers even though it was written for adults, with themes of adolescent angst and alienation becoming synonymous with young-adult literature. S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, written when Hinton was only 16 and published in 1967, features a truer, darker side of adolescent life that was not often represented in works of fiction of the time, and remains one of the best-selling young-adult novels of all time. Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, published in 1970, was another major success, focusing on controversial topics such as masturbation, menstruation, teen sex, birth control, and death. The music industry made a fortune selling rock records to people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, with youthful stars like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin having lifestyles that all but guaranteed their early deaths.
The Aging Boomers And Future Challenges
By the mid-2010s, sub-replacement fertility and growing life expectancy meant that Canada had an aging population, with Statistics Canada reporting 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, and projections suggest this gap will only increase in the next 40 years, significantly altering the Canadian economy. In the United States, despite their advancing age, baby boomers remain the second-largest age demographic after the millennials, with 71.6 million boomers in the country as of 2019. The age wave theory suggests an economic slowdown when the boomers started retiring during 2007-2009, and by 2018, 29% of people aged 65-72 in the United States remained active in the labor force. Europe had significant population growth in the late 20th century, but Europe's growth is projected to halt by the early 2020s due to falling fertility rates and an aging population, with 19.70% of the population of the European Union being 65 or older in 2018. The median age was 43 in 2019, and was about 29 in the 1950s, with 1.5 children per woman in the EU in 2015, down from 2.6 in 1960. 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. The baby boomers' retirement will create unprecedented challenges for social security systems and economic growth in developed nations.