Date: February 28th, 2024 10:26 PM
Author: Hideous Locale Persian
she has a very long winded article with a very poor conclusion regarding the reasons for the post war baby boom, but since it’s the only article I’ve read on the topic here’s the gist:
“ The golden thread linking the phenomena that comprise the triple mechanism we describe above – advances in household technology, progress in medical technology, and easier access to housing – is that they together sharply reduced the cost of having children. Household technologies meant less time was needed to care for children. Medical technology lowered the chance of mortality. Affordable housing lowered the cost of family formation, so people did it earlier and had bigger families. Together, these changes may have been powerful enough to counteract the depressive effect of rising incomes on fertility rates. Even the improvements in medicine, likely the most powerful force, may not have been strong enough to cause the Baby Boom alone.
However, the triple mechanism’s booster effect on birth rates was temporary, as the rate of improvements across these three areas slowed, or even stopped. Their effect was then overwhelmed by the effect of the continuing rise in living standards seen across the West and by the 1970s, most of the West had returned to a pre-Baby Boom state of decline in fertility rates.
Another Baby Boom?
Birth rates have continued to slowly decline since the 1970s. Today, there is no European country with a fertility rate that exceeds replacement rate, with rates as low as 1.3 in Italy and 1.2 in Spain. As it was in the early twentieth century, the West is again in the midst of a demographic winter.
To have a genuine shot at seeing spring again, policy makers should look back at the Baby Boom and how, for a lucky generation, being a parent became an easier and safer choice at breakneck speed.
We do not need a Mussolini-style ‘Battle for Births’ or the mass production of propaganda posters to bring about a demographic thaw. Such measures were not responsible for the Baby Boom, which was delivered by progress and positive changes that meant life-enhancing developments for millions.
If the parenting costs theory of the Baby Boom is right, it suggests that birth rates can be increased by making it safer and easier to choose to have children. Today, the most obvious parallels with the developments that we have argued gave us the Baby Boom are cheaper household appliances that make it easier for parents to raise their children; better and more affordable maternal healthcare and fertility assistance, from more generous IVF policies to artificial wombs; and, cheaper and more plentiful housing for families.
In January 2023, the United Nations published a report which described population ageing as an ‘irreversible trend’, speaking of declining fertility with an inexorability that echoes Dr Carr Saunders’ remarks in 1936. But Carr Saunders was proved wrong by the powerful countervailing effects of progress, and by focussing on material improvements that reduce the costs of having children, we can accomplish the same today.”
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5497293&forum_id=2#47449357)