WI: Western Birth Rate Didn't Drop Below Post WWII Baby Boom Rate

As the tin says, what if the Post WWII baby boom among western nations didn't slow down and the birth rate continued to remain at that level? How would this effect social policies in western nations that have ever increasing domestic populations? Does it effect immigration policies?
 
Obviously not a hint of open borders and a probable willingness to do whatever it takes to retain the oversea colonies. Figure a current USA population 0f 400 million with the demographics of 1955 including those of the workforce. Social Security is highly solvent. Consumer goods are much more expensive but also much more durable. The wage gap from top to bottom of the scale is narrower and income from capital is less dominate in the economy. Religion and morals again much like the 1950's. Med tech and computers less advanced than today but mega-engineering projects including a luna and near earth orbit colonies far more advanced. Politics- the names Clinton and Obama are utterly unknown.
 
Obviously not a hint of open borders and a probable willingness to do whatever it takes to retain the oversea colonies. Figure a current USA population 0f 400 million with the demographics of 1955 including those of the workforce. Social Security is highly solvent. Consumer goods are much more expensive but also much more durable. The wage gap from top to bottom of the scale is narrower and income from capital is less dominate in the economy. Religion and morals again much like the 1950's. Med tech and computers less advanced than today but mega-engineering projects including a luna and near earth orbit colonies far more advanced. Politics- the names Clinton and Obama are utterly unknown.

Why is technology less advanced but we have space colonies?
 
Why is technology less advanced but we have space colonies?

That makes no sense to me either. Personal computers, cell phones, MP3 players, tablets and the internet are all spaceflight spin-off technologies and they're only the really obvious ones.
 
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Obviously not a hint of open borders and a probable willingness to do whatever it takes to retain the oversea colonies. Figure a current USA population 0f 400 million with the demographics of 1955 including those of the workforce. Social Security is highly solvent. Consumer goods are much more expensive but also much more durable. The wage gap from top to bottom of the scale is narrower and income from capital is less dominate in the economy. Religion and morals again much like the 1950's. Med tech and computers less advanced than today but mega-engineering projects including a luna and near earth orbit colonies far more advanced. Politics- the names Clinton and Obama are utterly unknown.

Ha, ha, ha-ha-ha! No seriously, that's so zeerust-y it's not even funny. The Bommers' parents were people that found relief after the Great Depression and World War II and felt affluent in the 1950s and didn't know what else to do other than making more babies. Those babies, the Boomers, took the affluence for granted and found that there are more options than Pleasantville-style barefoot and pregnant.
 
Isn't the logical consequence of a high birth and survival rate, that means a population growing faster than the technological possibilities of feeding them, the search for the ressettlement of the population excess?

Found Martian colonies:D
 
Isn't the logical consequence of a high birth and survival rate, that means a population growing faster than the technological possibilities of feeding them, the search for the ressettlement of the population excess?

Found Martian colonies:D

I feel as though the US would find a way. Though it might not have as much a struggle with obesity
 
Speaking personally, if this was how things had been, I'd probably have wound up with 5 kids, like my parents had, rather than the 2 that my wife and I produced. I was born right in the middle of the baby boomer period [1955] and I have often told people that I grew up in the golden years. My mother worked until she got pregnant with me, and didn't work again for many years. One paycheck was enough. The difference is that my parents paid for 0 children to go to college, and I paid for 2 to go. The world does not stand still.
 
As the tin says, what if the Post WWII baby boom among western nations didn't slow down and the birth rate continued to remain at that level? How would this effect social policies in western nations that have ever increasing domestic populations? Does it effect immigration policies?

If the white population grows at a faster rate, but the birth rate of the post 1945 immigrants and their decedents remains the same it might mean that immigration policies are more lax. This would be because the people that wanted immigration to be controlled wouldn't feel as threatened and therefore they would be prepared to accept more immigrants.
 
As the tin says, what if the Post WWII baby boom among western nations didn't slow down and the birth rate continued to remain at that level? How would this effect social policies in western nations that have ever increasing domestic populations? Does it effect immigration policies?

That's kind of implausible. First-world TFRs were rapidly declining in the first half of the 20c, and were already not far above 2 in the 20s. There just aren't enough women who are interested in having this many children. There exists one developed country with a TFR significantly above replacement, and there it's because of substantial fundamentalist and traditional-religious ethnic groups, while the TFR for more educated ethnic groups is at replacement.

Obviously not a hint of open borders and a probable willingness to do whatever it takes to retain the oversea colonies. Figure a current USA population 0f 400 million with the demographics of 1955 including those of the workforce.

Fantasizing much? In the US, there was considerable opposition to the 1920s immigration quotas in the 1940s and 50s, and early moves to allow more people in. The immigration liberalization of 1965 passed at the tail end of the Baby Boom; the TFR then was still about 3.

Moreover, in Britain and France, immigration laws were tightened after the Baby Boom ended. Starting in 1948, Britain's borders were open to people from its former colonies. As air travel became cheaper, the Indians started arriving en masse, leading Britain to restrict immigration in the 1960s, and to largely abolish birthright citizenship in 1983. France abolished birthright citizenship in 1993.
 
That's kind of implausible. First-world TFRs were rapidly declining in the first half of the 20c, and were already not far above 2 in the 20s. There just aren't enough women who are interested in having this many children. There exists one developed country with a TFR significantly above replacement, and there it's because of substantial fundamentalist and traditional-religious ethnic groups, while the TFR for more educated ethnic groups is at replacement.

This may be a stupid question, but what country is that?
 
This may be a stupid question, but what country is that?

Israel.

I will note that "1950s gender roles" have no bearing in modern Israel. Israeli gender roles run the gamut from Northwestern European-ish to ultra-Orthodox, and in no subculture do they resemble those of 1950s' America. American gender roles from about 1900 to 1965 had a purdah system in which married women were expected to not work. In Israel, this is completely untrue of any Jewish group, including ultra-Orthodoxy (women work for a living, men study in yeshivas and occasionally work under the table), and mostly untrue of Muslim Arabs, where gender roles are more The Godfather Part 1 than Mad Men season 1.
 
As the tin says, what if the Post WWII baby boom among western nations didn't slow down and the birth rate continued to remain at that level?

Why would this happen?

The "baby boom" was a temporary retreat in an extremely deep, broad, long trend.

In the U.S., fertility declined from the beginning of the 1800s (down by 1/3 from 1800 to 1850). I have no data on other countries before the 1980s, but by that time, birth rates in other developed countries were way down from pre-industrial levels - and continued to decline.

Also:
In the period 1980-2010, fertility declined by 30%-60% in dozens of countries as diverse as Korea, Italy, Syria, South Africa, and Brazil.

I don't think one can just announce a change in this without any roots.
 
In the U.S., fertility declined from the beginning of the 1800s (down by 1/3 from 1800 to 1850). I have no data on other countries before the 1980s, but by that time, birth rates in other developed countries were way down from pre-industrial levels - and continued to decline.

Wikipedia's "demographics of ___" articles will give you TFRs going as far back as 1950-ish in many countries; in France it goes back to 1900. The story is pretty much as you say - the fertility decline was universal. There's one exception in the developed world, again, but it involves very religious subcultures with TFRs of 6-7.
 
Wikipedia's "demographics of ___" articles will give you TFRs going as far back as 1950-ish in many countries; in France it goes back to 1900. The story is pretty much as you say - the fertility decline was universal. There's one exception in the developed world, again, but it involves very religious subcultures with TFRs of 6-7.

Yeah, the demographic transition makes it almost impossible to maintain a high TFR for long without lots of immigration. I'm not sure how it would be possible to keep the baby boom going for multiple genererations.
 
The baby boom was not the same in most nations. In Below is a graph comparing various countries. The postwar baby boom was most pronounced in the U.S. and the British Dominions. In Britain itself, it was much more brief, though there was the small baby boom of the early 1960s.

Many issues led to lower birthrates. Firstly increased urbanization where children became a burden. Increased female participation in the workforce, along with later marrying age. Birth control has been an important factor, but even before the pill, women had begun to limit the number of children they were having. Importantly, the lack of well-paying jobs for the millennial generation along with high unemployment in many countries has probably led to fewer children being born.

CBR.png

CBR.png
 
Why is technology less advanced but we have space colonies?

Computers are less advanced, but the computer tech of 1968 is more than enough for a vigorous space program if physical expansion of living space is what the society wants. An ongoing babyboom would tend to focus interest in that direction I think.
 
......In the US, there was considerable opposition to the 1920s immigration quotas in the 1940s and 50s, and early moves to allow more people in. The immigration liberalization of 1965 passed at the tail end of the Baby Boom; the TFR then was still about 3.

............................

Obviously the Character of the American People would be somewhat different than in our world.......and YES that would be Fantasy as our Reality took a different and IMHO destructive to our civilisation path.
 
Speaking personally, if this was how things had been, I'd probably have wound up with 5 kids, like my parents had, rather than the 2 that my wife and I produced. I was born right in the middle of the baby boomer period [1955] and I have often told people that I grew up in the golden years. My mother worked until she got pregnant with me, and didn't work again for many years. One paycheck was enough. The difference is that my parents paid for 0 children to go to college, and I paid for 2 to go. The world does not stand still.

Ah, you hit maturity just as the disorders of the '60's peaked, as stagflation started to bite hard, 'The Population Bomb' was a best seller and feminism was being hothouse forced grown by government and universities. The stagflation in particular made a working father and a stayathome mother with three or more kids difficult for most.
 
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