Millennials Millennials Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the generational demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years. Millennials are sometimes referred to as "echo boomers" due to a major surge in birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s, and because millennials are often the children of the baby boomers. Although millennial characteristics vary by region, depending on social and economic conditions,
Generation X between 1946 and 1955, and "younger boomers", which they defined as born between 1956 and 1964. They found much of the cultural identity of the baby-boomer generation is associated with the "older boomers", while half of the "younger boomers" were averse to being associated with the baby-boomer cohort and a third of those born between 1956 and 1964 actively identified as members of Generation X. Demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe rejected the frequently used 1964 end-date of the baby-boomer cohort (which results in a 1965 start-year), saying that a majority of those born between 1961 and 1964 do not