Without WWII, would there have been a post-Great Depression baby boom in the West?

CaliGuy

Banned
Without World War II, would there have been a post-Great Depression baby boom in the West? Also, even if there would have been such a baby boom, would it have been anywhere near as large and as long as it was in our TL?

Basically, I am curious about this considering that the post-World War II baby boom appears to have been unexpected to some people. For instance, this 1930 article (true, it was written almost a decade before the start of World War II) predicted that the U.S. population in the year 2000 will be no more than 185 million--and probably considerably less than that! :

http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1930apr-00385?View=PDF

(In our TL, the U.S. population surpassed 185 million in the early 1960s!)

Anyway, what are your thoughts on this?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Birth rates will probably ramp up gradually as the economy improves rather than a climactic boom. I believe one of the reasons there was a boom was because soldiers came back home and started having lots of kids to make up for lost time. I'm not sure whether or not the Western population would be as high as OTL, but it would probably be for the better even if it was lower since the issue of an ageing population would not be as bad.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Birth rates will probably ramp up gradually as the economy improves rather than a climatic boom. I believe one of the reasons there was a boom was because soldiers came back home and started having lots of kids to make up for lost time. I'm not sure whether or not the Western population would be as high as OTL, but it would probably be for the better even if it was lower since the issue of an ageing population would not be as bad.
I heard an interview with an Israeli soldier about the 1973 war and he said there was a strong feeling of replacing the fallen among surviving soldiers when they got home. He said that the soldiers he knew that had been in combat generally went on to have large families; that might have just been his experience, but seems to hold for all countries after WW2. Even in Holocaust literature I've seen mention of the people that survived felt like they had to have families to make up for all those people that never got the chance to. So without the war there isn't that feeling among the population in general and even a lack of sense of making up for lost time, especially because there isn't a defined moment where you can say "the Depression is over, now we start living", more like things get gradually better and more people just feel like they can afford to have kids without going broke.
 
1913 USA Population 97,606,000 (Maddison). Using the 1937 growth rate of 0.7% (one of the lowest) I get a "natural" growth of population to 200,222,086 in 2016. (I applied it direct from 1913 to 2016 without looking at the real growth). So using "finger in the air" math you could use the 1945 population of 161,955,000 and get 265,758,258 in 2016. As of 2016 I believe we had about 323 million. So I would guestimate the USA has somewhere at or above this 265 million depending on what you do with immigration and if you give a little higher growth to ongoing improved economics. The smallest I can parse down the baby boom is about 10 million more folks by 2016 so I think immigration had a bigger impact (but I have not yet bothered with pondering my ATL policies).

Be aware that my calculation does NOT include any net immigration (a hand waive). I used this for my own working on a USA that avoids both wars but I kept the Depression (a hand waive). I used 1937 as a stable recovery from the Depression to show where Americans might settle at for a birth rate (a hand waive) and this was my assumption regarding how to mitigate the "baby boom" effect. For my own purposes I "fudged" things to keep the USA between 250 and 300 million so there you go.
 
Without WW2, Canada would only see a slow increase in population after the Great Depression. We would also have far fewer immigrants .... fewer immigrants fleeing wars, famines, etc.

BIG PICTURE Original time line:
Population growth occurs in booms and busts .... cycles ..... waves ......
If I may branch off to discuss women's' liberation in Canada .......? Much of this analysis was done by my aunt, who was born during the 1930s and has seen numerous changes in Canadian society.
Women's' liberation is important because it affects women's' education and - ultimately - birth rates.

OTL Few Canadian women worked outside the home during the Great Depression, they were told that women working (outside the home) was "stealing" jobs from under-employed men. While most Canadian women stayed home, they were reluctant to hear many children because of fears that they would not be able to feed many children.
During WW2, huge numbers of able-bodied men fought overseas and women filled vacancies in (booming) factories. Attitudes towards sexuality loosened a bit, but it was more about short-term.
Post-war, the nation felt that settling down with a wife, children and a steady job was the best treatment for Prlonged Traumatic Stress Disease (my distortion of a psychiatric term). Most women were tired of working in factories and gladly shifted to home-making. Canadian citizens were optimistic of a strong economy and believed that they could support young families.
Come the 1960s, baby-boomers matured to child-bearing age, but many young women feared that marriage and child-bearing would stiffle their lives at too young an age. Fortunately, modern birth-control methods became widely available during the late 1960s. Birth rates dropped.
By the late 1960s birth-rates decreased while immigration increased. The British Immigration law of 1962 reduced the numbers of colonists who were allowed to settle in the UK, so they emigrated to wealthier colonies like Canada, ANZAC and South Africa. Now the Canadian birth-rate is below replacement levels. Much of this decline can be attributed to baby-boomers aging out of child-bearing years. Now BB visit their grandchildren. Post 2000 Canada needs immigrants to fill jobs as any-boomers retire.

In 1972, "Limits To Growth" was published by the Clib of Rome. LTG profoundly changed Canadian birth-rates because citizens believed that human population was approaching the maximum capacity of the planet earth.
 
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