<P> The phrase baby boom refers to a noticeable increase in the birth rate . The post-war population increase was described as a `` boom '' by various newspaper reporters , including Sylvia F. Porter in a column for the May 4 , 1951 , edition of the New York Post , based on the increase in the population of the U.S. of 2,357,000 in 1950 . According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the first recorded use of `` baby boomer '' is from 1970 in an article in The Washington Post . Various authors have delimited the baby boom period differently . Landon Jones , in his book Great Expectations : America and the Baby Boom Generation ( 1980 ) , defined the span of the baby - boom generation as extending from 1943 through 1960 , when annual births increased over 4,000,000 . Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe , well known for their generational theory , define the social generation of Boomers as that cohort born from 1943 to 1960 , who were too young to have any personal memory of World War II , but old enough to remember the postwar American High . </P>
who came up with the term baby boomer
The Washington Post