WI: No Baby Boom

kernals12

Banned
Here's something I want to get off my chest btw: There's too much hand wringing going on about our population aging. We probably will have to spend more on healthcare, but we'll be able to spend less on schools. An older society is less crime prone. And future improvements in medicine, especially towards treating and possibly curing dementia and arthritis, will make for a silver generation perfectly able to take care of itself and work longer.
 
Obama was sandwiched between the Baby Boomer generation and my generation,Generation X. Now,the Boomers were also the ones who marched on Civil Rights,Environmental Issues and Women's Lib,so not all are bad, same as the supposed Greatest Generation were all good.
Since the Baby Boom is defined by a rise and fall in the birth rate, 1946-1964, Obama falls in that range. Culturally, the Baby Boom can be divided into two parts, Vietnam (1946-1953) and Generation Jones (1954-1964), the distinction being that the latter was not subject to conscription. So, early Baby Boom has much in common with those born during WWII and the late Baby Boom is more like Generation X.
 
We probably will have to spend more on healthcare, but we'll be able to spend less on schools.

Investment in schools is at least an investment in the future (if it works well only!) Health care is expensive - the closer people are to death, the more. A few days hanging on the machines might cost more than my whole education.
 

kernals12

Banned
Investment in schools is at least an investment in the future (if it works well only!) Health care is expensive - the closer people are to death, the more. A few days hanging on the machines might cost more than my whole education.
As long as expenditure per child remains constant, it's not a problem if we spend less on schooling for a shrinking number of kids.
 
America was still 35% rural in the year 1950 and in fact the 40s saw the most urbanization in the nation's history.

This zero sum theory of the postwar era goes against all logic and facts. The US may have been the sole undamaged industrial power in 1947, but not by 1952. And less production by the rest of the world means they have less to trade with us for consumption, so we're not any better off.

A few fair points in this, so a few points in partial rebuttal.

The 1920s were also a decade of vast strides in farm mechanization as cars, trucks, harvesters, tractors and other equipment became available, further reducing the need for human labor. Bear in mind here that the 1920 Census was the first in which a majority of the total US population was urban, continuing a decline that began decades before. So even for people who remained in rural areas, the need for large families to supply farm labor was being reduced by technology rolled out en masse in the 1920s.

The European and Japanese economies were still badly damaged in 1952. The German "economic miracle" was still 5 years away from being in full swing and Britain was still partially on rationing. The US had about a decade after the war in which it was THE dominant economy on the planet, an edge that took another 20 years to really fade away to the point where it had any genuine foreign competition in its domestic markets. For many products for which there was global demand, including agricultural products, there was only one place to buy: the United States. True, the bad economies may have reduced demand from what it might otherwise have been, but part of that was picked up by the US government's foreign aid programs like the Marshall Plan.
 
The Baby Boom happened because people who had few kids in the thirties and the WW2 years all had kids at the same time as those some 15-20 years younger. So no Baby Boom, to me, means more people born in the much of the "Silent Generation" (1928-1945). A shift in demographics would have increased the number of retirees since the late nineties, and with it, changes in health care and other programs for senior citizens.
 

kernals12

Banned
A few fair points in this, so a few points in partial rebuttal.

The 1920s were also a decade of vast strides in farm mechanization as cars, trucks, harvesters, tractors and other equipment became available, further reducing the need for human labor. Bear in mind here that the 1920 Census was the first in which a majority of the total US population was urban, continuing a decline that began decades before. So even for people who remained in rural areas, the need for large families to supply farm labor was being reduced by technology rolled out en masse in the 1920s.

The European and Japanese economies were still badly damaged in 1952. The German "economic miracle" was still 5 years away from being in full swing and Britain was still partially on rationing. The US had about a decade after the war in which it was THE dominant economy on the planet, an edge that took another 20 years to really fade away to the point where it had any genuine foreign competition in its domestic markets. For many products for which there was global demand, including agricultural products, there was only one place to buy: the United States. True, the bad economies may have reduced demand from what it might otherwise have been, but part of that was picked up by the US government's foreign aid programs like the Marshall Plan.
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Recovery was pretty swift.

And your conception of the world economy as a "competition" where one country's affluence is at the expense of another was debunked way back in 1776 by Adam Smith. And the money for the Marshall Plan didn't come from nowhere, it was provided by American taxpayers.
 
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kernals12

Banned
The Baby Boom happened because people who had few kids in the thirties and the WW2 years all had kids at the same time as those some 15-20 years younger. So no Baby Boom, to me, means more people born in the much of the "Silent Generation" (1928-1945). A shift in demographics would have increased the number of retirees since the late nineties, and with it, changes in health care and other programs for senior citizens.
That's not inevitable. The trends in births could've done like they did after World War 1 with a smooth line from the OTL 1939 level to the OTL 1973 level.
 
The OP was to consider no sudden rise in the birth rate in 1946, followed by a sudden drop after 1964. IMO, the hardships of the Depression and WW2 delayed the start of families. The emerging prosperity of the mid fifties in the US (that exceed expectations) kept it going. The low birth rates of the late sixties and early seventies reflected the low birthrates of 1935-1945. I still think the net result of no Baby Boom is to shift post-WW2 families into the late Silent Generation who would in turn, produce a larger early Generation X.
 

kernals12

Banned
The OP was to consider no sudden rise in the birth rate in 1946, followed by a sudden drop after 1964. IMO, the hardships of the Depression and WW2 delayed the start of families. The emerging prosperity of the mid fifties in the US (that exceed expectations) kept it going. The low birth rates of the late sixties and early seventies reflected the low birthrates of 1935-1945. I still think the net result of no Baby Boom is to shift post-WW2 families into the late Silent Generation who would in turn, produce a larger early Generation X.
The chart I posted shows that the decline in birthrates started during the roaring 20s, not the depression. And in general, birthrates should go down thanks to rising incomes, not up.
 
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