What Caused the 'Baby Boom'?
The common wisdom about the baby boom that was passed down to me was that once WW2 ended, all the lonely soldiers came home to their girlfriends, got married, and began a 15 year frenzied baby-making-fest. It’s one of those lullaby effect beliefs, it sounds reasonable until you say it out loud and think about the implications.
Derek Thompson–previously of the Atlantic and now on Substack–has a better explanation. It mainly comes down to trends in technology making childbirth safer, labor saying machines that made having a family cheaper, and government policy making home mortgages easier to get.