Human Generations

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Across all of humanity, generations have been metrics of family, heritage, culture, change, and progress. Our most technically evolved selves and indigenous peoples both look to past and future generations. As a Boomer, I have many friends who are grandparents, and the obvious joy they share with their grandchildren and their grandchildren share with them. Humanity anchors itself in generations.

Generations have been looked at by sociologists and historians – and the occasional futurist -as both a grounding to the past and a view into the future. Generally, the easy math for generations is to have them in their zenith and influence for 20 years. So roughly, there are five generations every century. That means that America, approaching its 250th birthday, is some 13 generations old.

I will focus on the generations since 1900 forward, as they are completely relevant for looking into the future. Each generation provides a progression when all are looked at sequentially. Those generations alive today and the next two to come will largely set the tone for the 21^st century. This and the subsequent columns will frame the generations listed here, their attributes, and what we might glean as we look into the rest of the 2020s, the 2030s, the 2050s, and the rest of the century.

Last summer, between Biden’s horrendous debate performance and before he dropped out of the race, I wrote a column entitled “Is The Boomer Dominance Finally Over? that had in it a list of all the presidents of the U.S. during my lifetime:

“In America, we see generational change in our Presidents. Based upon the generally accepted birth years above:

Eisenhower was from the Great Generation

Kennedy Great Generation

LBJ Great Generation

Nixon Great Generation

Ford Great Generation

Carter Great Generation

Reagan Great Generation

Bush Great Generation

Clinton Boomer

Bush Boomer

Obama Boomer

Trump Boomer

Biden Silent Generation”

I find it very interesting that Biden, who was the only president from the Silent Generation, followed four Boomer presidents and was judged “too old”. Through this generational filter, he was.

NOTE: All the data that follows is U.S.-centric. The problem with serving up global generational numbers is that many countries around the world lack comprehensive, historical documentation of population generations, resulting in considerable estimation. The countries that have good data would all have to be added up, so a piecemeal approach would be needed to arrive at valid global generational numbers.

The Generations since 1900

What follows are generally accepted birth years for each generation.

The Greatest Generation born 1901-1927

The Silent Generation born. 1928-1945

Baby Boomers “ 1946-1964

Generation X “ 1965-1980

Millennials. [Gen Y] “ 1981- 1997

Digital Natives {Gen Z] “ 1998 – 2016*

Generation Alpha “ 2017-**

I choose not to use the lazy effort to alphabetize generations. Once GenX became the accepted name for the smallest generation – following the largest one – then the next generation had to be Gen Y and then the one after that becomes Gen Z. I have always used the name Millennials for Gen Y and Digital Natives for Gen Z. The names are much more descriptive and useful. The Millennial Generation was the last generation fully born in the last millennium and therefore face the new millennium and century as the youngest generation when humanity entered the century and millennium that started in 2000. Generation Alpha is yet to define itself. Perhaps they will have “digital” as part of their name, such as Digital Scouts or Digital Settlers. We will see.

The Greatest Generation of course went through the Great Depression and WWII. This generation created the post-war phenomenon of abundance in America, Europe and Japan.

The Silent Generation shaped much of post-WWII thinking into the final third of the 20^th century. The “Organization Man” name was from this generation. A significant amount of institutional thinking – corporate and government – came from this generation.

The Baby Boom Generation was the largest generation ever both in the US and globally. There is a small range from 76-79 million people born in the US during this 18-year period. The largest percentage of the U.S. population they represented by some 40% of the total population of the country in the 1990s, peaking with the highest number in 1999 of 79 million members. As of 2024, they are no longer the largest generation in the US.

The Gen X generation was the smallest generation of the 20^th century. I have often referred to this generation as one that has “a chip on its shoulders, as they have been waiting too long for the Boomers to leave the arena”. This statement, when I have made it from stages around the world, is greeted with shouts of “amen!’ or “you got that right” from large parts of the GenXers in my audiences. This generation is about to have its time in the sun. It will be a much shorter time of preeminence than that of prior generations, certainly the Boomers.

The Millennials were the second largest generation in America after the Boomers, and depending on how one looks at the subsequent generation(s), the Digital Natives are even larger, in terms of total numbers that the Millennials. That said, neither of these generations will ever achieve the 40% of total US population that the Boomers did.

Here is a chart that shows the number of people in the U.S. by generation:

In raw numbers, both the Millennial and the Digital Natives are the two largest generations alive today. The interesting thing is that this is true at the same time that the median age of the US is slowly getting older. This is due to the size of the Boomer generation and the obvious fact that the two generations following the Boomers are aging every year.

In the next few columns, I will discuss how generations can be helpful when looking into the future of the next few decades, and in fact, the rest of the 21st century.

*Many people think that this generation’s birth year range is 1996-2012. I disagree

** Many people think that the birth years of this generation are 2013-2024. I disagree. I think that having two generations within a 25-year period is one too many.