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In my mind a generation comprises a 20 year period : a nice safe 'round' number and one that can encompass the growing experiences of a change in the surrounding culture. I cannot call myself a Boomer because my formative years were not based in the prosperity of the 40s and 50s. My childhood does not have memories of certain presidents or cultural, at least not until Gerald Ford became President. It wasnt until I was 7 or so that I started to become aware of an Outside World, and hitting my adolescent years, there were certain things I was interested in, but a political and cultural interest did not come to full bloom until I hit highschool and college...and so I include myself in the group of peers who were matriculating through the same process as I was at the time. This takes up a spanse of 20 years.

I am not a statistician, so I cannot fully appreciate the extent to which the demographic studies go, but I have never thought those particular polls/data to be representative of what I understood to be happening when I decided to take note of what was going on...and that wasn't really until I was aware that I was going to be a part of that society pretty soon...that usually takes up to about 20 years for a person.

I'd say the generational thing needs to take more into account than statistical data from national census.

I'd say the generational thing needs to take more into account than statistical data from national census.

I agree but there is really no way to really perfectly nail down a time period of a generation. Even using a 20 year standard isn't that accurate because you are talking about people born in say 1965 and 1985 being in the same generation, Which they are obviously very different.

I think the best way to define the years of a generation is by which previous generation was the majority of parents during those years.

For example,
When the WWII generation was the majority of parents their kids would be the Baby Boomers,
When the Silient generation was the majority of parents their kids would be Generation Jones (What we know today as the late disco era boomers)
When the baby boomers were the majority of parents the kids are Gen-X
When Generation Jones were the majority of parents the kids are Gen-Y

Since Gen-X is so small we could probably merge the Xs&Ys kids into Gen-Z