Measuring and explaining the baby boom in the developed world in the mid-twentieth century

Sánchez-Barricarte, Jesús J.

doi:10.4054/demres.2018.38.40

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…As opposed to the relatively limited literature on the baby bust of the 1930s, there is a large literature on the baby boom (Easterlin 1961(Easterlin , 1966Chesnais 1992;Calot and Sardon 1998;Macunovich 1998;Van Bavel 2010;Van Bavel and Reher 2013;Sánchez-Barricarte 2018), although we continue to lack fully convincing explanations. The existing literature has paid relatively little attention to several potentially important aspects of these trend changes in fertility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…The existing literature has paid relatively little attention to several potentially important aspects of these trend changes in fertility. These include: (1) the underlying causes of the baby boom, especially those related to the demographic transition and, more specifically, to the low levels of fertility during the 1930s (Dyson 2001;Lee 2003;Reher 2004Reher , 2007Reher , 2011Reher , 2015Dyson 2010;Van Bavel and Reher 2013;Sánchez-Barricarte 2018); (2) the extent to which increasing fertility during the baby boom was the result of earlier and more widespread marriage rather than increases in large families, as shown in the work of Norman Ryder on the USA (Ryder 1980(Ryder , 1982; (3) the degree to which the baby boom also affected parts of the developing world Murphy 1985, 1986;Reher 2004;Requena 2014, 2020); (4) the disparities in reproductive change within different countries (Van Bavel and Reher 2013;Reher and Requena 2015;Sánchez-Domínguez and Lundgren 2015;Reher and Requena 2020;Ryder 1986); (5) the role of changes in the reproductive health of women and increasing probability of survival among young children over the period (Albanesi and Olivetti 2014;Gauvreau et al 2018;Reher 2021); and (6) the way the subsequent baby bust in much of the world after the 1960s was linked to the experience of the baby boom and even to the dearth of births during the 1930s (Reher 2015(Reher , 2021. All of these issues warrant the attention of researchers, for they are central to explaining both the causes and the basic dynamics of fertility during the 20th century -the baby boom and the baby busts -and also its longterm implications for contemporary societies the world over.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A survey of baby booms and busts in 20th century Spain

Reher¹,

Requena²,

Sánchez-Domínguez³

et al. 2021

DemRes

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BACKGROUNDThis paper presents a new source of microdata on women's reproductive life in 20 th century Spain, the Baby Boom and Bust Survey (BBBS). While certain countries have other sources of microdata such as censuses or specific fertility surveys that have been useful in shedding light on aspects of reproduction, few provide the longitudinal, integrated, and nuanced perspective afforded by this survey. The Baby Boom and Bust Survey includes women's reproductive histories for the period prior to the baby boom, the baby boom itself, and the early stages of the baby bust. OBJECTIVEThe purpose of this paper is to describe this data source, its content, its methodological underpinnings, and the way the fieldwork was carried out. METHODSThe survey was administered to a total of 1,021 women above 60 years of age residing in Spain in 2012. A random sample was used and access to informants was secured via the Padrón Continuo (the continuously updated local population register of Spain). The distribution by characteristics closely fits the sample frame.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A survey of baby booms and busts in 20th century Spain

Reher¹,

Requena²,

Sánchez-Domínguez³

et al. 2021

DemRes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Past scholarship offers many approaches to estimating exposure to conflict and population outcomes. Most are based on either within‐conflict analyses, pre/post comparisons, or comparisons of affected/unaffected areas/groups (e.g., Blanc, 2004; Khlat et al, 1997; Rutayisire et al, 2013; Sánchez‐Barricarte, 2018). A caveat with these approaches is that they may be biased by local unobserved variation that could determine both the presence of war and women's fertility responses to violence.…”

Section: Analytical Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Those negative turns include loss of security, family, relationships and social support as described above. Additionally, poverty (Ibáñez & Moya, 2010), housing shortages, skewed sex ratios (Khlat et al, 1997), and postponement of marriage (Blanc, 2004; Sánchez‐Barricarte, 2018; Torrisi, 2020) may shift women's preferences away from childbearing.…”

Section: Conflict and Fertility Desiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The remarkable stability of fertility desires during the Colombian armed conflict 2000–2016

Svallfors

2021

Population Space and Place

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Limited attention has been paid so far to the impacts of war on proximate determinants of fertility, including childbearing preferences. This study explores the relationship between exposure to local conflict violence and fertility desires in Colombia. I combined nationally representative micro-level data on the timing, frequency and decisiveness of reproductive preferences from the Demographic and Health Surveys, with geospatial information about local violence from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program from 2000 to 2016. The results show a remarkable stability in women's childbearing desires in relation to conflict during the observation period, robust to multiple respecifications of the study sample, statistical model and conflict measurements.The study indicates that previously reported increases to fertility behaviour cannot be explained by altered preferences, suggesting a surge in unwanted pregnancies. This highlights the need for policy programs to support women in realising their fertility preferences, whatever they may be.

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“…Although we know these proximate causes of the Baby Boom, we know very little about the social mechanisms behind them. Classical explanations focus on the optimism and the economic boom after the Second World War in the 1950s and 1960s as driving factors (Doepke, Hazan, & Maoz, 2007;Easterlin, 1987;Greenwood, Seshadri, & Vandenbroucke, 2005;Macunovich, 1998;Sánchez-Barricarte, 2018;Van Bavel & Reher, 2013). However, research has recently shown that such changes in socio-economic factors fall short of explaining the observed intra-and inter-country variability in fertility trends during the Baby Boom (Albanesi & Olivetti, 2014;Sandström, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mid-Twentieth Century Baby Boom and the Role of Social Influence. An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

Nomes¹,

Grow²,

Bavel³

2019

hlcs

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Around the middle of the 20th century, most Western countries experienced a surge in birth rates, called the Baby Boom. This boom was unexpected at the time and the underlying mechanisms are still not entirely clear. It was characterized by high levels of inter- and intra-country variability in fertility, as some regions even experienced fertility decline during the Boom. In this paper, we suggest that social influence processes, propelling a shift towards two-child families, might have played an important role in the observed changes in fertility. Interactions in social networks can lead new types of childbearing behaviour to diffuse widely and thereby induce changes in fertility at the macro level. The emergence and diffusion of a two-child norm resulted in homogenization of fertility behaviour across regions. Overall, this led to a reduction of childlessness and thus an increase of fertility, as more people aspired to have at least two children. Yet, in those regions where larger family sizes were still common, the two-child norm contributed to a fertility decline. To explore the role of social influence with analytical rigor, we make use of agent-based computational modelling. We explicate the underlying behavioural assumptions in a formal model and assess their implications by submitting this model to computational simulation experiments. We use Belgium as a case study, since it exhibited large variability in fertility in a relatively small population during the Baby Boom years. We use census data to generate realistic starting conditions and to empirically validate the outcomes that our model generates. Our results show that the proposed mechanism could explain an important part of the variability of fertility trends during the Baby Boom era.

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Measuring and explaining the baby boom in the developed world in the mid-twentieth century

Cited by 8 publications

References 46 publications

A survey of baby booms and busts in 20th century Spain

A survey of baby booms and busts in 20th century Spain

The remarkable stability of fertility desires during the Colombian armed conflict 2000–2016

The Mid-Twentieth Century Baby Boom and the Role of Social Influence. An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

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