Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowball7
NJGoat wants to dismiss all the migrative, demographic, cultural
and medical reasons I proposed, replacing them with war and depression.
What he hasn't considered is that the baby boom wouldn't have occurred if the
"return to normalcy" politically and economically happened just a decade later.
The reasons for that, I would argue, were spelled out in my prior posts.
The people changed.
Look at the chart of US birth rates. It must be acknowledged that a massive
change in American society took place in the 1960s.
NJGoat's placing sole cause d'etre upon the wars and depression also completely fails
to address the decline of the 1920s, a time of economic and political strength.
What I said, however, does address it, because it was the coming-of-age
of the children of the immigrant wave from the 1910-20 spike that produced
the families of the baby boom, due to their cultural mindset of large families,
and this characteristic was immune to their economic struggles.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files...rate-00-04.png
http://ushistoryproject-immigrationa..._to_the_US.png |
So, here's the thing...the question is "what caused the baby boom?". Here were your initial reasons:
1- coming to adulthood of large immigrant population
2- drastic improvements in medicine
3- family viewed as a positive for success (no welfare)
4- wide opportunities in American business and development
5- no birth control, no abortion
My initial statement was that the reasoning was more mundane, essentially pent up demand that was then sustained by the economic boom that followed. My macro point and the one that many researchers tend to agree with is that the US had been experiencing a long decline in birth rate that was caused by the trend of industrialization and urbanization. Along that linear trend you have a negative bump (depression, WW2) followed by a positive bump (baby boom). It all equalizes back out to the overall linear trend. You can pretty much see this in the chart you conveniently posted. Meaning that if we don't look at it all in a microcosm the "boom" was really a correction not a unique event as some purport.
Now, I did not disagree with all of your points, but I do have some issues with some of them and the inferences you are trying to draw.
1. You have presented no evidence that "immigrants with large families" caused the baby boom. In fact, even if we assume they all maintained their "cultural preference for large families despite economic condition" all of the empirical evidence would say they were too small of a group to matter. Your immigrant group in the time period that would have mattered most (the second gen one's having kids) would have come from the 1910-1930 period on your chart. That represents a TOTAL of ~1.6 million people over a 20+ year period. This would represent less than 1% of the US population. Not enough to really influence the overall trend. That is easily evidenced by looking at the size of the average US household which DECLINED every year since 1890 through today with the only exception being the period 1960-1965 when it increased from 3.33 to 3.35. Now there were gains of about 20% in large households (meaning 6 or 7 people aka 4 or 5 kids plus parents) during the period 1950-1965 , but that represents going from 10% of US households in 1950 (a low point versus the previous 60 years) to about 12% of US households. Absent anyway to empirically tie immigrant descendants as the fuel to the baby boom, it needs to be dismissed because the preponderance of evidence says they didn't cause it.
2. There was no real "drastic" improvement in the infant mortality rate during the period and even then birth rate and infant mortality rate have a bit of a relationship. When infant mortality is high then birth rate is also high. As infant mortality decreases, so does the birth rate. So, while more of the babies born during the boom period lived, there were still less total births then when the mortality rate was higher. It was in equilibrium.
3. This is a political statement because of the "no welfare" tag and where you start delving into a regressive argument that the "boom" would have continued if not for influences such as birth control, welfare, abortions, etc. That argument is very common among the "Lost Golden Ages" folks. There is truth in the statement about value of family which I will get to in a moment, but probably not in the way you would go with it.
4. This definitely had an impact on the boom, no argument from me.
5. This had no impact and ties back in to my statement in number 3 above. You are essentially using reasons that you falsely believe ended the boom to explain why the boom happened in the first place. It's very poor circular logic.
So...why did the boom happen? Like I said the overall "boom" was really a correction from the depression and war. Everything does in fact trend towards "normal" along whatever general long standing trend is in existence. The boom, was a correction in the long term trend of US birth rate. However, we can still explore why it happened.
The boom began in 1947 (you can see the big quick spike on the chart). There is ZERO doubt that this was fueled by pent up demand and soldiers returning from war. Births among younger people continued on the same pace they were previously. What exploded in that early part of the boom were OLDER women giving birth after having delayed having children during the depression and war. Now, that only accounts for the beginning couple years of the boom (the WW2 correction), so what sustained it?
Well, the US entered a period of massive economic growth and a huge expansion of the middle class (the correction from the depression). Two things occurred during this economic boom: 1) men displaced women from the work force and 2) male wages rose. As men returned and "took back" their jobs, women had fewer and fewer opportunities for work. This led to "success" being defined for women (here's that valuing family part) by being married, having children and running a household. This trend remained constant throughout the mid-1950's as male wages were able to satisfy the material aspirations of the average household.
When it comes to why the boom ended, the theory would go like this...
By the late 1950's the birth rate started to decline (long before the pill and abortions mind you). This trend was driven by the rise of material aspirations aka "Keeping up with the Jones'". Over time, male wages declined were not able to sustain the material aspirations and we see a trend of more and more women entering the workforce. As more women entered the workforce...birth rates began to decline. This was evident by the late 50's and really took hold in the 60's.
The resulting sharp decline (back towards the general trend absent depression and war) was a result of the boomer's themselves and their response to the conditions that they were raised in.
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