Saloni Dattani and Lucas Rodés-Guirao from Our World in Data analyze the baby boom period from 1946 to 1964, challenging the simple narrative that it began just after World War II. They highlight that birth rates in the U.S. had fluctuated even before the war, beginning a slow rise in the late 1930s. This trend was marked by a surge in births at the end of World War II, indicating that the era of the baby boom was part of a longer historical pattern rather than a single event.
The commonly-held belief that the baby boom began immediately after World War II overlooks early signs of rising birth rates that started in the late 1930s and continued through the war.
Birth rates had been on the decline in the early twentieth century, but this decline slowed at the end of the 1920s, leading to a gradual increase toward the baby boom.
Collection
[
|
...
]