Baby boomers have dominated American culture for nearly five decades. Likened by demographers to a pig moving through a python, boomers account for one-third of Americans80.6 million of the 250 million U.S. residents. They are the children born during the baby boom of 19461964, the offspring of women who had more children than those in either the generation before or after them. In 1946, for example, the first of the baby boom years, 19 percent more babies were born than a year earlier. During several of these years the birthrate approached 120 births per thousand women, compared to 67.2 in 1988. At its peak in 1957, mothers of baby boomers had 3.8 children, in contrast to just 1.9 children today. And of course, in the business world, the boomer birth explosion has been a retailer's fantasy, an absolute windfall.

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