The 'official' baby boom years are indicated (1946–1964), and the dashed line marks a TFR of 2.1, which is replacement-level fertility. The female wage is assumed to represent the value of time foregone in the labor market in favor of childbearing: the 'opportunity cost' or 'price' of women's timeįigure 2 A comparison of baby booms in several western nations using the Total Fertility Rate (TFR, which equals the number of births a woman would experience throughout her childbearing years, at current age-specific rates). They assume that fertility will tend to rise as male income rises, but fall when material aspirations increase and when female wages rise. Their focus has been primarily on three factors: male income, the female wage, and material aspirations (desired standard of living). Economists have attempted to develop a 'unified theory' to explain both the boom and bust. Exhilaration and optimism after the war seemed to combine with a general feeling of affluence in a booming postwar economy, and generous provisions for returning GIs, to make young couples feel able and willing to support children (Bean Jones).īut this apparently positive relationship between income and fertility fails to explain why fertility rates then suddenly plummeted in the early 1960s, causing the 'baby bust.' There was a tendency at the time to attribute the decline to the introduction of the birth control pill in 1963-but it is generally acknowledged now that the pill merely facilitated a trend that originated several years earlier, in the late 1950s. But in addition younger women departed from a historic upward trend in female labor force participation in order to stay home and start families-a departure that lasted for nearly twenty years. (Total Fertility Rate is the number of births a woman would experience throughout her childbearing years, at current age-specific rates.) SOURCE: Vital Statistics and Natality, various years. birth rate and numbers of births in the United States. They account for most of the immediate 1946– 1947 'spike' in births associated with returningįigure 1 A comparison of the historic U.S. For many older women these were births postponed during the Depression and World War II.

The majority of it occurred not through an increase in family size but rather through a sharp decline in the proportion of women choosing to remain childless (Westoff). It is a snapshot of their situation today, looks back at their past and forward to their future.There is no consensus regarding the cause of the baby boom: social scientists suggest a complex mixture of economic, social, and psychological factors. The book Baby boomers gives an impression of the influence of this post-war generation on Dutch society. This will be particularly relevant for older single people who do not have a partner to help them. Obviously, the economy will have a strong focus on services and care. 2050: 1.8 million people 80 or olderĪround 2050, 1.8 million people – 10 percent of the population - will be 80 or older. Their retirement led to a sharp rise in the number of state-paid pensions. The first baby boomers, those born in 1946, became eligible for old-age pension 2011. They are still working, are at the top of the careers, and therefore have a relatively high income and have built up a substantial amount of capital. The present group of 55-64 year-olds have higher levels of education than their parents, but relatively lower levels than younger generations. Cohabiting before marriage, for example, delaying childbirth, sometimes for a long time, returning to work after having a baby, and divorcing their partners. They broke away from the standard pattern of starting work after school, but staying with their parents, marrying from their parents’ home and starting a family – at which point women gave up work to become full-time mothers – and experimented with other forms of living together. 1970s: new life coursesīaby boomers chose different life courses than their parents. What the statistics say (available in English), Statistics Netherlands presents a number of observations on today’s 55-64 year-olds, looking at the past, the present and the future.

The future holds a rapid increase in the number of over-80s in store. The effects of this baby boom were far-reaching: overcrowded primary school classes in the 1950s, a surge on the labour market and in higher education in the 1960s, a construction frenzy in the 1970s, and from 2011 a large rise in the number of 65 year-olds. Although births also peaked in other countries in western Europe after the war, until the mid 1950s the Dutch birth rate was the highest in the region. Some 2.4 million babies were born in the Netherlands in the period 1946–1955.

2012: 225 thousand people reach 65 years of age.

1970s: new generation breaks away from parents’ life course.

1950s baby boom