Causes
Economist and demographer Richard Easterlin in his "Twentieth Century American Population Growth" (2000), explains the growth pattern of the American population in the 20th century by examining the fertility rate fluctuations and the decreasing mortality rate. Easterlin attempts to prove the cause of the baby boom and baby bust by the "relative income" theory, despite the various other theories that these events have been attributed to. The "relative income" theory suggests that couples choose to have children based on a couple's ratio of potential earning power and the desire to obtain material objects. This ratio depends on the economic stability of the country and how people are raised to value material objects. The "relative income" theory explains the baby boom by suggesting that the late 1940s and the 1950s brought low desires to have material objects, because of the Great Depression and World War II, as well as plentiful job opportunities (being a post-war period). These two factors gave rise to a high relative income, which encouraged high fertility. Following this period, the next generation had a greater desire for material objects, however, an economic slowdown in the United States made jobs harder to acquire. This resulted in lower fertility rates causing the Baby Bust. Jan Van Bavel and David S. Reher proposed that the increase in nuptiality (marriage boom) coupled with low efficiency of contraception was the main cause of the baby boom. They doubted the explanations (including the Easterlin hypothesis) which considered the post-war economic prosperity that followed deprivation of the Great Depression as main cause of the baby boom, stressing that GDP-birth rate association was not consistent (positive before 1945 and negative after) with GDP growth accounting for a mere 5 percent of the variance in the crude birth rate over the period studied by the authors. Data shows that only in a few countries was there a significant and persistent increase in the marital fertility index during the baby boom, which suggests that most of the increase in fertility was driven by the increase in marriage rates. Jona Schellekens argues that the rise in male earnings that started in the late 1930s accounts for most of the rise in marriage rates and that Richard Easterlin's hypothesis according to which a relatively small birth cohort entering the labor market caused the marriage boom is not consistent with data from the United States. Matthias Doepke, Moshe Hazan, and Yishay Maoz all argued that the baby boom was mainly caused by the alleged crowding out from the labor force of females who reached adulthood during the 1950s by females who started to work during theBy region
Asia and Africa
Many countries outside the west (among them Morocco, China and Turkey) also witnessed the baby boom. The baby boom in Mongolia is probably explained by improvement in health and living standards related to the adoption of technologies and modernisation.Europe
France and Austria experienced the strongest baby booms in Europe. In contrast to most other countries, the French and Austrian baby booms were driven primarily by an increase in marital fertility. In the French case, pro- natalist policies were an important factor in this increase. Weaker baby booms occurred in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom the baby boom occurred in two waves. After a short first wave of the baby boom during the war and immediately after, peaking in 1946, the United Kingdom experienced a second wave during the 1960s, with a peak in births in 1964 and a rapid fall after the Abortion Act 1967 came into force. The baby boom in Ireland began during the Emergency declared in the country during theLatin America
There was also a baby boom in Latin American countries, excepting Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. An increase in fertility was driven by a decrease in childlessness and, in most nations, by an increase in parity progression to second, third and fourth births. Its magnitude was largest in Costa Rica and Panama.North America
In the United States and Canada, the baby boom was among the largest in the world. In 1946, live births in the U.S. surged from 222,721 in January to 339,499 in October. By the end of the 1940s, about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the 1930s. In 1954, annual births first topped four million and did not drop below that figure until 1965, by which time four out of ten Americans were under the age of 20. As a result of the baby boom and traditional gender roles, getting married immediately after high school became commonplace and women increasingly encountered tremendous pressure to marry by the age of 20. A joke emerged at the time around comedic speculation that women were going to college to earn their " MRS degree" due to the increased marriage rate. The baby boom was stronger among American Catholics than among Protestants. The exact beginning and end of the baby boom is debated. The U.S. Census Bureau defines ''baby boomers'' as those born between mid-1946 and mid-1964, although the U.S. birth rate began to increase in 1941, and decline after 1957. Deborah Carr considers baby boomers to be those born between 1944 and 1959, while Strauss and Howe place the beginning of the baby boom in 1943. In Canada, the baby boom is usually defined as occurring from 1947 to 1966. Canadian soldiers were repatriated later than American servicemen, and Canada's birthrate did not start to rise until 1947. Most Canadian demographers prefer to use the later date of 1966 as the boom's end year in that country. The later end to the boom in Canada than in the US has been ascribed to a later adoption of birth control pills. In the United States, more babies were born during the seven years after 1948 than in the previous thirty, causing a shortage of teenage babysitters. At one point during this period, Madison, New Jersey only had 50 babysitters for its population of 8,000, dramatically increasing demand for sitters. In 1950, out of every $7 that a California couple spent to go to the movies, $5 went to paying a babysitter.Oceania
The volume of baby boom was the largest in the world in New Zealand and second-largest in Australia. Like the US, the New Zealand baby boom was stronger among Catholics than Protestants. The author and columnist Bernard Salt places the Australian baby boom between 1946 and 1961.See also
* 1970s energy crisis * Aging in the American workforce *Bibliography
* Barkan, Elliott Robert. ''From All Points: America's Immigrant West, 1870s–1952,'' (2007) 598 pages * Barrett, Richard E., Donald J. Bogue, and Douglas L. Anderton. ''The Population of the United States'' 3rd Edition (1997) compendium of data * Carter, Susan B., Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, and Alan L. Olmstead, eds. ''The Historical Statistics of the United States'' (Cambridge UP: 6 vol; 2006) vol 1 on population; available online; massive data compendium; online version in Excel * Chadwick Bruce A. and Tim B. Heaton, eds. ''Statistical Handbook on the American Family.'' (1992) * Easterlin, Richard A. ''The American Baby Boom in Historical Perspective,'' (1962), the single most influential studReferences
{{Reflist Natalism Demographics 20th century in economic history * Population geography Baby boomers Aftermath of World War II