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Post-World War II baby boom
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As is often the case after a major war, the end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, notably those in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia. There is some disagreement as to the precise beginning and ending dates of the post-war baby boom, but it is most often agreed to begin in the years immediately after the war, ending more than a decade later; birth rates in the United States started to decline in 1957.
In May 1951, Sylvia Porter, a columnist for the New York Post, used the term "boom" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in post war America.
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Encyclopedia
As is often the case after a major war, the end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, notably those in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia. There is some disagreement as to the precise beginning and ending dates of the post-war baby boom, but it is most often agreed to begin in the years immediately after the war, ending more than a decade later; birth rates in the United States started to decline in 1957.
In May 1951, Sylvia Porter, a columnist for the New York Post, used the term "boom" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in post war America. She wrote:
Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a batch, bounce them all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom. The biggest, boomiest boom ever known in history.
There are an estimated 78.2 million Americans who were born during this demographic boom in births. Many experts now believe that two distinct generations were born during this baby boom; the older generation is usually called the Baby Boom Generation and the younger generation is usually called Generation Jones. Baby Boomers are now middle age and entering senior years. In the economy, many are now retiring and leaving the labor force.
Causes
Before the Baby Boom, there was a period of approximately 20 years in which having children was difficult because of the effects of the Great Depression and World War II. The Baby Boom reflected the sudden removal of economic and social restraints that kept people from starting families. While austerity and restraint were the norms during the stress of the war years, after the war, couples reunited and returned to traditional roles. Returning (mostly male) soldiers re-entered the workforce; many women left wartime work to concentrate on child-bearing and child-rearing. Marriage became again a cultural and career norm for most women, and the result was an increase in the birth rate.
The boom continued in the economic glow of the fifties, but dampened its rate as the recession of 1958 sloughed into the following recovery. One theory about the end of the baby boom is that it petered out as the biological capacity of boomer parents took its course. The key biological factor is female fertility. Women are fertile only into their mid-forties, and simple mathematics indicates that a woman married in her mid-to-late twenties after the war ended in 1945 would remain fertile for approximately another 20 years. The advent of the birth control pill in 1960 in the U.S. also contributed to the slowing birth rate, as previous contraceptive methods were less popular or reliable.
In the United States
In the United States alone, approximately 76 million babies were born between those years. 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, when four out of ten Americans were under the age of twenty.
In the years after the war, couples who could not afford families during the Great Depression made up for lost time; the mood was now optimistic. During the war unemployment ended and the economy greatly expanded; afterwards the country experienced vigorous economic growth until the 1970s. The G.I. Bill enabled record numbers of people to finish high school and attend college. This led to an increase in stock of skills and yielded higher incomes to families.
Definition of the boom years
The exact beginning and end of the baby boom can be debated. In the United States, demographers usually use 1946 to 1964, although the U.S. birthrate began to shoot up in 1941 and to decline after 1957. By 1948 the US population increase was back to the pre-Depression increase rate of about 1.5% per year.
Based on US census information :
- US Involvement in World War II (+ 5 post boomer years)
| Year | US resident population
(thousands) | Net change
(thousands) | Percent change |
|---|
| 1941 | 133,121 | 1,161 | 0.88 | | 1942 | 133,920 | 799 | 0.60 | | 1943 | 134,245 | 325 | 0.24 | | 1944 | 132,885 | -1,360 | -1.01 | | 1945 | 132,481 | -404 | -0.30 | | 1946 | 140,054 | 7,573 | 5.72 | | 1947 | 143,446 | 3,392 | 2.42 | | 1948 | 146,093 | 2,647 | 1.85 | | 1949 | 148,665 | 2,572 | 1.76 | | 1950 | 151,868 | 3,203 | 2.15 | | 10 year average | - | 1,991 | 1.43 | |
The five percent "baby boom" increase of 1946 and the trickle into 1947 barely impacted the US population growth rate between 1900 and 2004.
Marriage rates
Marriage rate rose sharply in the 1940s and reached all time highs. After WWII Americans began to marry at a younger age, the average age of a person at their first marriage dropped to 22.5 years for males and 20.1 for females, down from 24.3 for males and 21.5 for females in 1940. Getting married immediately after high school was becoming commonplace and women were increasingly under tremendous pressure to marry by the age of 20. A common stereotype stated that women were going to college to earn their M.R.S. (Mrs.) degree.
Family size
Family size increased sharply throughout the baby boom, the average woman bore 3.09 children in 1950 which increased to 3.65 children per family in 1960, but the peak was in 1957, when the figure stood at 3.77. Most couples became pregnant with their first child within 7 months of their wedding; between 1940 to 1960, the number of families with three children doubled and the number of families having a fourth child quadrupled.
Easterlin Models
Economist and demographer Richard Easterlin in his "Twentieth Century American Population Growth" (2000), explains the growth pattern of American population in the twentieth 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 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 1950s brought low desires to have material objects, because of the Great Depression and WWII, as well as huge job opportunities, because of 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.
In Canada
In Canada, the baby boom is usually defined as the generation born 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 in that country. The later end than the US is ascribed to a later adoption of birth control pills.
In the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom experienced a second baby boom during the 1960s, with a peak in births in 1965 and a third (smaller) one in the late 1980s. The two peaks can clearly be seen in the UK population pyramids.
European and South-Pacific trends
Many European countries, Australia and New Zealand also experienced a baby boom. In some cases the total fertility rate almost doubled. The American birth model, conceived by demographer Frank Notestein, was punctuated by an end to the upsurge in births and a return to pre-war levels. Prior to WWII, fertility rates in Europe and America were on a general decline due to improved nutrition and medicine, and a surge in births were previously not experienced at such a large scale. Based on this model, baby boom years for other countries regarded for having a baby boom are as follows:
- France 1946–1974
- United Kingdom 1946–1971
- Finland 1945–1950
- Germany 1955-1967
- Sweden 1946–1952
- Denmark 1946–1950
- Netherlands 1946–1972
- Ireland 1946–1982
- Iceland 1946–1969
- New Zealand 1946–1965
- Australia 1946–1965
In some of these examples, an "echo boom" followed some time after as the offspring of the initial boom gave rise to a second increase, with a baby "bust" in between. The birth years of the baby boom as noted being both short and long lived, creates what many believe to be a myth to the notion of defining baby boomers as one "generation", as a unified concept is clearly not possible. Indeed, multiple generations may be present in a single country such as Ireland where the boom lasted 36 years. This overlapping effect of generations is not illuminated when considering crude fertility rates. The only common ground for the collective boom is the same approximate starting year. This example can be applied to each state in the United States on an individual basis. The states with a census in place in 1946 saw fertility rates drop to pre-war levels throughout the 1960s, with the average being in 1964.
See also
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