On the other hand, they also need an investment in terms of parental time that may prove very costly if employment prospects suddenly improve (de la Croix and Pommeret 2019). On the one hand, they involve financial expenses that are extremely hard to cut in times of hardship. Indeed, children require an uninterrupted flow of attention, which is difficult to commit to when economic conditions vary too frequently. In a new study (Chabé-Ferret and Gobbi 2018), we suggest that having children is perceived to be riskier, and therefore is averted, in periods of high economic uncertainty. Data for the US confirm that states where we observed the largest drops in maternal mortality rates also experienced the largest spikes in birth rates (Albanesi and Olivetti 2014). One risk that has declined sharply during the period of the baby boom is that of mothers dying during labour. What if, instead of (or in parallel to) the cost, it was the risk associated to having children that has evolved over time? Again, data on the evolution of rents over time allow us to discard this mechanism as an important driver of the baby boom (Murphy et al. The period of the baby boom has indeed been marked, particularly in the US, by a movement of suburbanisation, facilitated by the drop in the cost of cars as well as the development of highways. Second, the Amish community, which barely uses modern technology, has also experienced a coincidental baby boom (Bailey and Collins 2011).Ī third theory has focused on the cost of housing. First, data on electrification reveal a negative impact of the diffusion of home appliances on fertility, rather than the contrary. This theory, though, has been challenged on two grounds. This sudden increase in efficiency in household chores would have freed up time for housewives to take care of larger families (Greenwood et al. Second, the years of the baby boom were marked by a technological boom that affected the ‘home production’ sector, through the dissemination of electrical appliances such as the washing machine or the dishwasher. However, the fluctuations in female labour force participation in that period were of a magnitude that can hardly explain the massive spike in fertility that the baby boom has been. The choice of a career over a family seemed therefore less desirable. Hence, the young women of the time faced scarce labour market opportunities (Doepke et al. This movement negatively affected the demand for female labour right after the war. Two main reasons have been put forward to explain why the value of women’s time has potentially declined during the baby boom.įirst, many women entered the labour force during the Great Depression and war times. Some scholars have highlighted that this cost was particularly low for women who gave birth to the baby boom generation. In a context in which mothers are expected to make a large part of that investment, the monetary value of their time, also called opportunity cost, may be seen as the main driver of fertility decisions. In particular, having children requires a substantial time investment. Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis and Fishback and Kachanovskaya (2015) How much do children cost?Įconomists have focused their attention on factors that influence the cost of having children to explain fluctuations in fertility. Although appealing, this theory is not confirmed by the data (Hill 2015).įigure 2 Birth rates versus completed fertility He suggested that generations entering adulthood upon favourable economic conditions relative to those that prevailed in their childhood, were more inclined to have larger families. The earliest theory of the baby boom in the social sciences was proposed by Easterlin in 1966. They cannot account for the deeper cycle in completed fertility that started in the early 1930s. War mobilisations and demobilisations have only had a ‘tempo’ effect – births were averted for a few years, but caught up later on. However, the data show that the baby boom was not only the result of a catch-up of pregnancies averted during the war, nor was it limited to countries involved in WWII, casting doubt on these explanations alone.įigure 2 compares two indicators of fertility: the birth rate, which reports the number of births per 1000 people in the population in a given year, and the completed fertility rate, which represents the total number of children that women born in a given year had over their lifetime. The most popular narratives in the general public mention the return of mobilised soldiers or the wave of optimism after the end of the war as responsible mechanisms. Yet, no consensus has emerged in the scientific community. Several different theories have been put forward by demographers, sociologists, and economists to explain the sudden rise in birth rates that occurred between the early 1940s and the late 1960s.
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