Your generation by birth year, using Pew Research Center’s definitions
Updated October 2026
Pew set the Millennial end point at 1996 in a January 2019 short read, explaining that anyone born from 1997 onward belongs to a new generation. Its generations chart lists the Silent Generation (1928–1945), Baby Boomers (1946–1964), Generation X (1965–1980) and Millennials (1981–1996). The boomer boundaries are the most grounded in data: they follow the surge in U.S. births after World War II in 1946 and the decline after 1964. Pew’s 2020 report on Gen Z defines it as born after 1996, with no end year.
It checks your birth year against Pew’s ranges and reports the generation, your position within it, whether you sit on a cusp, and whether the Census Bureau’s 2015 millennial range (1982–2000) would classify you differently. The generation depends only on birth year, not the date; being born on December 31, 1996 makes you a Millennial, January 1, 1997 makes you Gen Z.
| Born | Pew generation | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1964 | Baby Boomer | Last year of the baby boom |
| 1965 | Gen X | First Gen X year |
| 1980 | Gen X | Last Gen X year |
| 1981 | Millennial | First millennial year (Pew); not a millennial in Census 2015 |
| 1996 | Millennial | Last millennial year |
| 1997 | Gen Z | First Gen Z year |
| 2000 | Gen Z | Gen Z (Pew); millennial in Census 2015 |
| 2012 | Gen Z | Gen Z; 16th year of an open-ended range |
| 2013 | Gen Z | Gen Z by Pew’s only boundary; no official Gen Alpha |
There is no official U.S. government list of generations. When the Census Bureau reported in June 2015 that millennials outnumbered baby boomers, it described millennials as born between 1982 and 2000 (83.1 million people then), a range that starts a year later and ends four years later than Pew’s. Marketers, authors and other researchers draw their own lines too, so the same person can be a Millennial in one article and Gen Z in another. If a survey or report you are reading uses generations, check which years it means.
People born within a year or two of a boundary often feel they fit both groups; some call those born around 1977–1983 “Xennials,” though Pew does not use that label. The calculator flags the first and last year of each range. Being on a cusp changes nothing in the data: Pew counts a 1980 birth as Gen X and a 1981 birth as a Millennial.
Pew’s sources cited here give Gen Z a start year (1997) but no end year, and do not define a generation after it. So by Pew’s published boundaries, a child born in 2013 or 2020 is still Gen Z, and the calculator says so. “Gen Alpha” is a label used in media and marketing, but it is not officially defined by Pew or the Census Bureau. Pew notes that a typical generation spans 15 to 18 years; if Gen Z followed that pattern, it would end with births somewhere between 2011 and 2014.
Using the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates of the U.S. resident population by single year of age on July 1, 2025, with birth year taken as 2025 minus age (so each count is approximate by up to a year at each end):
| Generation | Born | U.S. residents, July 2025 | Share of population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silent Generation | 1928–1945 | 14.7 million | 4.3% |
| Baby Boomers | 1946–1964 | 66.6 million | 19.5% |
| Generation X | 1965–1980 | 64.4 million | 18.8% |
| Millennials | 1981–1996 | 73.1 million | 21.4% |
| Gen Z (first 16 years) | 1997–2012 | 72.2 million | 21.1% |
| Born since (no official name) | 2013–2025 | 50.6 million | 14.8% |
Millennials are the largest group, ahead of the boomers, even though more boomers were born: the counts include immigrants and exclude people who have died. By the Census Bureau’s own 1982–2000 range the millennial count is about 87.5 million. The U.S. total was about 341.8 million.
Apart from the baby boom, which follows a measurable change in birth rates, generation boundaries are judgment calls. Pew chose 1996 partly because the formative events for Millennials (the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession) were experienced differently by those born later. In 2023 Pew said existing generational definitions may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences within them, and that it would be more careful about when it uses generations at all.
It does not use other countries’ definitions, which can differ, and it does not predict personality, values or behavior: people within one generation vary more than the averages suggest. Population figures are U.S. residents only.
Mixing definitions. A headline about “millennials” may use 1980–1994 or 1982–2000; compare like with like.
Treating Gen Alpha as official. It is a popular label without a Pew or Census start year.
Using age instead of birth year. Generations are fixed by birth year; a Millennial does not become Gen X by getting older.