Millennials are now officially America's biggest living generation

May 4, 2016

This article is published in collaboration with Business Insider.

ATTENTION EDITORS - IMAGE 1 OF 22 OF PICTURE PACKAGE '7 BILLION, 7 STORIES - OVERCROWDED IN HONG KONG. SEARCH 'MONG KOK' FOR ALL IMAGES - People cross a street in Mong Kok district in Hong Kong, October 4, 2011. Mong Kok has the highest population density in the world, with 130,000 in one square kilometre. The world's population will reach seven billion on 31 October 2011, according to projections by the United Nations, which says this global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet. While more people are living longer and healthier lives, says the U.N., gaps between rich and poor are widening and more people than ever are vulnerable to food insecurity and water shortages. Picture taken October 4, 2011.

Pew Research Center estimates that millennials have overtaken baby boomers to become America's largest living generation. Image: REUTERS/Bobby Yip

Bob Bryan

Finance and Markets Intern, Business Insider

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Youth Perspectives is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Youth Perspectives

The Pew Research Center recently analyzed US Census Bureau population estimates of America's population as of July 1, 2015, and they found that last year, millennials outnumbered baby boomers for the first time ever.

There is no formal definition of where the cutoffs lie for different generations, but Pew identifies five major living adult US generations:

-The Greatest Generation, born before 1928

-The Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945

-The Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964

-Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980

-Millennials, born between 1981 and 1997

Using those definitions, Pew estimated that as of last year, there were about 75.4 million millennials, outnumbering the approximately 74.9 million baby boomers.

Pew noted that this crossover occurs as the millennial population continues to grow in size because of young immigrants moving to the US, while the boomers are aging and beginning to die off.

Here's Pew's chart showing projections for the sizes of the different generations going forward. For more, check out Pew's full report:

Image: Pew Research Center

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.