The American baby boom in historical perspective

At the risk of generalizing too freely it would probably be fair to say that the typical treatment of population growth in economic theories is as an exogenous variable whose movement is given by demographers. One purpose of the present paper is to suggest that there is scope for fruitful research into the causes of population change compatible with economists training and experience. The vehicle for this discussion is the recent baby boom. We first take a fresh look at the historical record in the light of the Kuznets-cycle conception of economic change taking care to distinguish the experience of three population groups with significantly different patterns--foreign-born native-born urban and native-born rural. Then some possible reasons for the patterns observed are explored. The analysis is confined to the white population because of the greater reliability of the data for this group and its predominant influence in determining the pattern for the total. (excerpt)