The mid-twentieth century fertility boom from a global perspective

Abstract

During the central decades of the twentieth century there is ample though often indirect evidence that a significant rise in fertility took place in much of the world. In some countries with historic demographic transitions this trend change has been called the baby boom. Elsewhere it has often been called the demographic explosion. Seldom has it been addressed from a global perspective. The main goal of this paper is to study these shifts comparatively, assessing the extent to which the timing and the mechanisms behind increasing fertility were or were not shared by different areas of the world. The paper provides a detailed description of fertility trends in 13 countries from four continents, based on a cohort approach to fertility and making use of data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-I). Our analysis shows that, with some exceptions, increasing fertility was a global demographic phenomenon, although there are important variations in terms of intensity, timing, and duration.

WAS THERE A MID-20THCENTURY FERTILITY BOOM IN LATIN AMERICA?

“…It is impossible for us to estimate with a reasonable degree of accuracy the intensity of the boom in Bolivia where no realistic benchmark date is available and, as stated earlier, there was no boom in Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay. This notwithstanding, fertility in these nations increased by between 9 and 20 per cent, slightly lower than increases in some developed countries like the United States, Austria or France (20-40 per cent), higher than in others (2-5 per cent in Spain and Hungary) and more or less on a par with increases in a small sample of developing countries (Turkey, Morocco, China) (Reher and Requena 2014).…”

“…For the Latin American nations presented here, the increases in this indicator are quite pronounced, often by as much as 10 per cent. Judging from the results presented here together with those contained in the Reher and Requena (2014) paper, there appear to be indications that this may be a universal characteristic of the mid-century fertility boom. There are three possible explanations for this change.…”

“…In most countries, increases in survivorship are even more important for net fertility than those due to fertility change itself. The net effect of both variables places the Latin American fertility/health boom on a level only slightly below that of the strongest baby booms in the developed world (the United States, for example) and well above the impact of the boom in many other developed countries (Reher and Requena 2014) 12 . This result has important implications for the long-term economic and social consequences of the fertility boom in Latin America because it means that the actual number of offspring -the net family sizeincreased far beyond what is suggested solely by increases in cohort fertility.…”

“…For each country, the two fertility measures have been estimated for 5-year birth cohorts of women born in the first half of 20 th century (in the cases of the countries with Source: IPUMS-I. 4 For a more detailed description of this battery of tests, see Reher and Requena (2014).…”

“…A recent publication has launched a full-fledged assault on this dearth of knowledge regarding the developing world at mid-century (Reher and Requena 2014). In this paper, micro-census data were used to reconstruct cohort fertility trends for a set of developed and developing countries (13 in total).…”