Australia and New Zealand
In Australia, there is debate over generational birth dates. A Sydney Morning Herald article defined Generation X as "Those born roughly between 1963-1980." However, 1981 is a common "cut-off" date. Many sources, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics, use a 1965-1981 birth range to define Generation X.
Like its neighboring country, Australia, sources in New Zealand, including the country's labour statistics, locates Generation X between 1965 and 1981. However, the University of Adelaide's Centre for Learning and Professional Development gave a slightly different range of Generation X birthdates, ranging between 1965 and 1982.
The shorter birth year definitions are shorthand for fertility rates. Gen Xers (as a cultural generation) look beyond demographics to define themselves by a shared location in history, common beliefs, attitudes and values (and a common perceived membership). Defining Gen X purely by demographic bulges and busts (like the Census) misses key cultural indicators that a very different set of young people has come along. Commentators who set Millennial birth boundaries starting in the late-70s often make the same assumptions using fertility rates to define birth dates rather than shared beliefs, attitudes and values. Children born in the early 1960s and after had a very different coming of age experience than those born in the late 1950s. Some of the most influential cultural definers of Gen X were born during the period between 1961 and 1964.
Read more about this topic: Generation X
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