Born in the 1950s

The world they were born into

The 1950s opened with the Korean War and ran through the early Cold War. Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, the year Francis Crick and James Watson, drawing on Rosalind Franklin's X-ray work, described the double helix of DNA. The Soviet Union put Sputnik into orbit in 1957 and began the space race, and the Treaty of Rome the same year founded what became the European Union.

Growing up

Rock and roll arrived in the middle of the decade, and television spread into most homes in North America and Britain. In South Africa the Congress of the People adopted the Freedom Charter at Kliptown in 1955. In much of the west, children born in the 1950s grew up in a period of full employment and rising living standards.

Which generation

Everyone born in the 1950s belongs to the Baby Boomers. The boundaries are conventions rather than facts, and the generations page names the source for each one.

The marked line is 1950, where the decade begins.

Year by year

The Chinese year begins not on 1 January but at a new moon, usually the second after the December solstice, and from 1900 to 2100 always between 21 January and 20 February. In the 1950s it began as early as 24 January, in 1955, and as late as 18 February, in 1958, so a birthday in January or early February belongs to the animal of the year before. The table gives the day each year began.

New year dates are worked out from the new moons and the solar terms, and checked against published tables. Born before the new year →

Read on

• Baby Boomers
• How generations are defined
• The 1940s
• The 1960s
• Every year