The mid-twentieth century fertility boom from a global perspective

Abstract

During the central decades of the twentieth century there is ample though often indirect evidence that a significant rise in fertility took place in much of the world. In some countries with historic demographic transitions this trend change has been called the baby boom. Elsewhere it has often been called the demographic explosion. Seldom has it been addressed from a global perspective. The main goal of this paper is to study these shifts comparatively, assessing the extent to which the timing and the mechanisms behind increasing fertility were or were not shared by different areas of the world. The paper provides a detailed description of fertility trends in 13 countries from four continents, based on a cohort approach to fertility and making use of data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-I). Our analysis shows that, with some exceptions, increasing fertility was a global demographic phenomenon, although there are important variations in terms of intensity, timing, and duration.