---
title: "Generation"
chunk: 7/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:17:45.779516+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Other terminology ===

The term generation is sometimes applied to a cultural movement, or more narrowly defined group than an entire demographic (such as cuspers between generations). Some examples include:

The Stolen Generations, refers to children of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander descent, who were forcibly removed from their families by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under Acts of their respective parliaments between approximately 1869 and 1969.
The Beat Generation, refers to a popular American cultural movement widely cited by social scholars as having laid the foundation of the pro-active American counterculture of the 1960s. It consisted of Americans born between the two world wars who came of age in the rise of the automobile era, and the surrounding accessibility they brought to the culturally diverse, yet geographically broad and separated nation.
Generation Jones is a term coined by Jonathan Pontell to describe the cohort of people born between 1954 and 1965. The term is used primarily in English-speaking countries. Pontell defined Generation Jones as referring to the second half of the post–World War II baby boom. The term also includes first-wave Generation X.
MTV Generation, a term referring to the adolescents and young adults of the 1980s and early-mid 1990s who were heavily influenced by the television channel MTV. It is often used synonymously with Generation X.
In Europe, a variety of terms have emerged in different countries particularly after the 2008 financial crisis to designate young people with limited employment and career prospects.
The Generation of 500 is a term popularized by the Greek mass media and refers to educated Greek twixters of urban centers who generally fail to establish a career. Young adults are usually forced into underemployment in temporary and occasional jobs, unrelated to their educational background, and receive the minimum allowable base salary of €500. This generation evolved in circumstances leading to the Greek debt crisis and participated in the 2010–2011 Greek protests.
In Spain, they are referred to as the mileuristas (for €1,000, "the thousand-euro-ists").
In Portugal, they are called the Geração à Rasca (the "Scraping-By Generation"); a twist on the older term Geração Rasca ("the Lousy Generation") used by detractors to refer to student demonstrations in the 1990s against Education Ministers António Couto dos Santos and later Manuela Ferreira Leite.
In France, they are called Génération précaire ("The Precarious Generation").
In Italy the term "generation of 1,000 euros" is used.
Xennials, Oregon Trail Generation, and Generation Catalano are terms used to describe individuals born during Generation X/Millennial cusp years. Xennials is a portmanteau blending the words Generation X and Millennials to describe a microgeneration of people born from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
Zillennials, Zennials, Snapchat Generation, and MinionZ are terms used to describe individuals born during the Millennial/Generation Z cusp years. Zillennials is a portmanteau blending the words Millennials and Generation Z to describe a microgeneration of people born from the mid- to late-1990s.
In the Netherlands the term Pechgeneratie ("Bad luck generation") describes students who started their higher education between the years of 2015 and 2022. In those years, the Dutch government had replaced the basic grant (basisbeurs) system with a loan system in which students had to take on debt to pay for their studies.

== Criticism ==
Philip N. Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, criticized the use of "generation labels", stating that the labels are "imposed by survey researchers, journalists or marketing firms" and "drive people toward stereotyping and rash character judgment." Cohen's open letter to the Pew Research Center, which outlines his criticism of generational labels, received at least 150 signatures from other demographers and social scientists.
Louis Menand, writer at The New Yorker, stated that "there is no empirical basis" for the contention "that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations." He argued that generational theories "seem to require" that people born at the tail end of one generation and people born at the beginning of another (e.g. a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, and a person born in 1964, the last of the Boomer era) "must have different values, tastes, and life experiences" or that people born in the first and last birth years of a generation (e.g. a person born in 1980, the last year of Generation X, and a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X) "have more in common" than with people born a couple years before or after them.
In 2023, after a review of their research and methods, and consulting with external experts, Pew Research Center announced a change in their use of generation labels to "avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people's complex lived experiences", and said that, going forward, they will only conduct generational analysis when historical data is available that allows them to "compare generations at similar stage of life" and "won't always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels."

== See also ==

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Fry, Richard (16 January 2015). "This Year, Millennials Will Overtake Baby Boomers". Pew Center.
Ialenti, Vincent (6 April 2016). "Generation". Society for Cultural Anthropology. Archived from the original on 13 December 2018. Retrieved 5 February 2018.
Ulrike Jureit: "Generation, Generationality, Generational Research", version: 2, in: Docupedia Zeitgeschichte, 09. August 2017

== External links ==
 The dictionary definition of generation at Wiktionary
 Quotations related to Generation at Wikiquote
 Media related to Generations at Wikimedia Commons