Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the mid-20th-century baby boom that followed the end of World War II. The dates, the demographic context, and the cultural identifiers may vary by country. Most boomers are the parents of Generation X and Millennials.
In the West, boomers' childhoods in the 1950s and 1960s had significant reforms in education, both as part of the ideological confrontation that was the Cold War, and as a continuation of the interwar period. Theirs was a time of economic prosperity and rapid technological progress, and many grew up expecting the world to improve with time.