You've probably heard about the surge in the birth rate that occured in the 20 years after World War 2 ended, the so-called "baby boom". You can see from the chart how much of a surge it was from the 1930s levels. What's interesting is how pessimistic the literature of the 1930s was about population growth. Indeed, it reads a lot like the projections of today. For the US, the forecast was also worsened by immigration, once a large source of population growth, grinding to a virtual halt during the Depression. The result, was that in 1936, the US census bureau predicted population would peak at a
dismal 135 million by 1950.
By 1948, things had improved enough that the census could
project a population peak of 164 million by the year 1990. But by the 50s, with the baby boom in full swing, the Census stopped predicting population leveling off. They estimated the US would easily surpass the 200 million mark (which it did, in 1966). And by 1967, they were predicting over
350 million Americans by the year 2015.
So, what if there was no baby boom? And not just in the US, how about everywhere? With so much fewer people, how does it impact us economically and culturally?