<p>'rent, your basic premise is wrong. The increase in births that constituted the “Baby Boom” did not peak until the early '60s. One usually sees the dates for the Baby Boom as 1949-1964, although I think by 1964 the birth rate was already declining, and I suspect that people born in 1946, say, have a lot more in common with people born in 1950 than they do with people born in 1940. </p>
<p>The next spike in births started happening in the early 80s and peaked around 1990 – hence the peak in high school graduates this year.</p>
<p>My youngest sister, born in 1962, does not consider herself a Boomer at all, but there’s no question I and all of my other siblings, born in the 50s, were.</p>
<p>There IS something of a cultural divide in the Baby Boom, roughly corresponding with the end of the draft. People born after 1954 didn’t live through the Vietnam War and associated domestic chaos quite as intensely as the leading edge of the boomers. But the bulk of the demographic baby boom happened after 1954.</p>