Lane four
Pick your decade. See what was waiting for you.
What was the world like the year you were born?
Every decade from the 1950s to the 2000s, with the generations born in it, what the world was like for those babies, and the Chinese zodiac for every year from the real Lunar New Year date. The 1950s were the baby boom; the 1970s a birth dearth; 2007 set the US record for births.
Born in the 1950s
The peak of the baby boom: 4.3 million US births in 1957, television in most homes by the decade's end.
Born in the 1960s
The boom's last years and Gen X's first: civil rights, Vietnam and the Moon landing.
Born in the 1970s
The birth dearth: births fell to 3.1 million in 1973. Inflation, Watergate and the end of Vietnam.
Born in the 1980s
The echo boom and the first home computers. Gen X to 1980, Millennials from 1981.
Gen X · Xennials · Millennials
Born in the 1990s
The web goes public, the Cold War ends. Millennials to 1996, Gen Z from 1997.
Born in the 2000s
Record births in 2007, the iPhone, and the Great Recession. Gen Z, all the way through.
Why the year you were born matters
The sociologist Karl Mannheim argued in 1928 that what people meet in their youth becomes the "natural view of the world" against which everything later is measured. The decade you were born in decides which events those will be. 1
It also decides how crowded your year was. US births ran above 4 million a year from 1954 to 1964, fell to 3.1 million in 1973, and reached a record 4.3 million in 2007. 2,3,4
Most of all it decides your generation, and how that label shifts depending on who is counting. The generations pages cover each one, with the years by source and the research behind the stereotypes.
Year pages are coming
Each year will get its own page: then-vs-now prices for bread, gas and a house, in that year's money and today's. We only print a price when we have a cited source for it, so those pages arrive once the price tables are checked. For now, each decade page shows the Chinese zodiac for every year, worked out from the real Lunar New Year date.
Questions people ask
What generation was I born into?
Find your decade below. Each year is tagged with its generation in Pew Research Center's lines, and the in-between labels where they apply. For other sources' years, see the generations pages.
Why does my Chinese zodiac animal not match my birth year?
The Chinese zodiac year starts at the Lunar New Year, between late January and mid-February, not on January 1. Birthdays before that date belong to the previous year's animal. Each decade page lists the date for every year.
Which decade had the most births?
In the United States, the late 1950s: births peaked at 4.3 million in 1957. The single biggest year on record is 2007, at 4,316,233.
Everyone born that year shares the headlines. Your card is the part nobody else shares.
Your card reads the day, the minute and the place you arrived: your sun sign and decan, your moon and rising sign with a birth time, your numbers and your Chinese year. Sealed until you print it.
What your card covers
See all six pages, sealedFold the pages back
1 Who you are
2 The machine says
3 Your sky
4 Love & your people
5 Work & money
6 Your year ahead
Sources
- The Sociological Problem of Generations, Karl Mannheim (1928; English translation 1952), reprinted in a 2009 anthology and hosted by the University of Exeter's "1989 after 1989" project. Read on .
- The oldest Baby Boomers turn 80 in 2026, Pew Research Center, 9 January 2026. Read on .
- NCHS – Births and General Fertility Rates: United States, 1909–2018, CDC, NCHS (data.gov dataset). Read on .
- Births: Preliminary Data for 2007, CDC, National Vital Statistics Reports 57(12), 18 March 2009. Read on .
For entertainment and self-reflection. Astrology and numerology are traditions, not science.
Spotted something wrong, out of date or missing? The corrections page says how we fix it.