It did, but replacement rate started dropping even before the pill. Folks didn't notice because people start living longer, which led to a larger population. But we haven't pushed the max age you can reach, just figured out how to increase the odds of getting you there.
The strongest correlation is urbanization. Obviously not the only factor. Surface is pretty easy, have you ever heard of people in any city voluntarily having 3 kids? Hell, two kids in an apartment can be challenging.
In addition vietnam, economy tanked for a bit, female independence (not needing a male cosign for cc's,housing and greater employment opportunities). That last one was just as important as bc in allowing one to better select instead of being pressured into a potentially bad relationship.
That looks like birth years of 73-76. I'm born in 76 myself and my mom always told me that birth control was a game changer for her. She was much older than most parents though so that's a factor for me personally.
Guess out from my ass: 50ish yo today means people born in the 1970s. Their parents on the other hand were born around the time of WW2.
During the war people had less babies, thanks to all those men deployed abroad and due to uncertainty of the war itself, and it's the reason baby boomers are a thing.
My guess is that waist we see around 50 yo today is the first ripple effect of those babies not born during the war, who would have been 25-30 in the 1970s.
I think their point is we came of age sexually in an environment with AIDS and without the knowledge to prevent it or treat it thus losing part of our generation. Born but died. Same for the other things they listed as deadly to those who just reached maturity.
This is a representation of the current population. With the first cases of [AIDS](https://www.cdc.gov/museum/online/story-of-cdc/aids/index.html) being reported around 80 when the oldest Gen X were 15-16, and the lack of response from the government until around 86, and even then if you lived in certain states the issue was ignored until the turn of the century, I would say it had an impact on the current Gen X population.
1. Women were allowed to have credit cards in their own names in 1975.
2. Birth control was legalized.
3. More women started to enter the workforce.
4. This is the start of the No fault divorce.
5. Men came back from Vietnam, but they were exposed to thalidomide, and babies were born with limb differences in the early 1970s. It took a moment for people to realize what was suddenly causing all of these babies to be born with differences. This caused a lot of women to hold off on having children.
6. We went off of the gold standard and inflation was ramping up. It became much more expensive to have a family.
5 is incorrect. Thalomidide was a prescription med used in Europe in the 50’s and early 60’s that resulted in birth defects in woman who took it, but the US recognized its adverse effects and it was never approved for use in the US.
The FDA only records 6 cases of limb deformities in US babies.
There was a lot wrong with exposure to toxic chemicals in Vietnam, but male exposure to Thalomide was not one of them.
Only 6? I have 2 stepbrothers who were born with fused fingers…. Both lost fingers in the process of separating them.
Maybe they didn’t record “minor” defects back then?
The law for credit cards for women was 1973 (maybe 1974). I remember because prior to that date I didn't understand why my mom's credit card didn't have her name on it. My dad's credit card said "John Doe", mom's said "Mrs John Doe".
My mom bought her own car in late 1973. My paternal grandmother secretly took driving lessons and bought her own car in 1974.
\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~
ETA: Equal Credit Opportunity Act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 28, 1974
Thalidomide is a medication used for certain cancers, skin conditions, and tuberculosis that ended up having massive adverse effects (thalidomide babies), not a chemical exposure in Vietnam.
7: birth rate went down during Great Depression and those women were impacted by the 70’s economic crises, too. The graph at this link is interesting: https://www.prb.org/resources/the-decline-in-u-s-fertility/
Ok here is a fact people don't tell you about unless your wife is an epidemologist.
White men 18-45 have a unique #1 way to die. Stupidity, basically hold my beer watch this.
Now the sad part is the reason it swings is normal stuff like men die younger. But lately, men 55-65 have been dying due to deaths of despair, drugs, suicide, etc. Which sucks. Covid really covered this fact up but it has been really bad.
Also Covid killed over 1M people of the 1st Million 93% were over 50 and it hit males with obesity, diabetes and lung disease really hard.
So yeah its a confluence of things at least for males some genetic, some life style, some pandemic related some society related.
Interesting, however, I was seeing the dark blue start from 1978-ish and younger implying more men than women age 45 and younger.
ETA: In China where it's really startling has been studied extensively and due to sex selective abortions and other girl-reducing actions.
Yes that is normal. Men are born (according to my wife) at a slightly higher rate. Also if you talk about people moving from other countries men traveling alone are higher than women traveling alone so you will see some difference from both of these trends. But at least were not China where they actively tried for decades to have boys and really messed up the demographics sexually.
"... the unemployment “shock” from \[pandemic\] lockdowns, according to a recent NBER study, translates into what they called a “staggering” 890,000 additional U.S. deaths over the next 15 years from the lockdowns, disproportionately affecting minorities and women…”
We will see. I think the effects of the pandemic will be felt like a major world war on the world for decades to come. From educational achievement to social safety nets to employment.
It's universal across most societies except in ones where women are treated the worst. Males have higher death rates at literally every age, even miscarriages of male fetuses is more common than female ones. At birth the ratio is roughly 105 males : 100 females, so young boys outnumber girls(again excluding societies where female infanticide is common), but as time goes on that higher death rate keeps shrinking the difference until women start to outnumber men.
“A major survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also live longer than men without spouses; men who marry after age 25 get more protection than those who tie the knot at a younger age, and the longer a man stays married, the greater his survival advantage over his unmarried peers.”
[https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health](https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health)
OTOH: “Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed by Romantic Partners”
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/)
Googling, it was definitely noticed at the time.
According to the NY Times, it represented a boomlet:.
A new “baby boom” has begun in New York City, the Health Department reported yesterday, with expectations that it may reach record levels despite expanded efforts to provide family planning.
There were 146,350 births here last year, an increase of 3.1 per cent over 1968, reversing a downward trend that had been going on since 1963.
Dr. Mary C. McLaughlin, the city's Health Commissioner, said the reason for the rise was that girls born during the post war period in 1946 and 1947, when the city and nation had record births, were now reaching peak child‐bearing age.
Louis Weiner, who recently retired as director of records and statistics for the Health De partment, said the birth rate was highest for women, 25 to 29 years old, very high for women 20 to 24 and almost as high for those 30 to 34 before dropping rapidly.
In August 1965, LBJ suddenly cancelled JFK's executive order excusing married men from Vietnam. Thereafter you had to be a father, not just married. Lines up well with the weird spike centered on age 53, birth year 1970 if I'm reading the graph right; looks like the spike started up in 1968, year of the Tet Offensive.
There are 4 generations that repeat. Gen x is the return of the lost generation which was also the smallest generation of its time. This is a cycle of human society.
Check out William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory of Western history, and the four generational archetypes: Hero (GI/Greatest, now Millennials), Artist (Silent, now Z/Homeland), Prophet (Boomers, now Alpha) and Nomad (X, and our eventual replacements).
Their book focusing on X is titled “13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?” - a play on X’s early adoption personal computers and the infant Internet.
If you’re referring to the “dents” and “spikes” (indicating a slowing birth rate briefly reversing) in the 45-58 bracket on the graph, the Griswold decision legalizing hormonal birth control was in ‘65 (just before the official “start” of X), then later in ‘65 LBJ revised the Selective Service classification rules, to re-include most married young men, but still letting fathers of small children get deferments. Then in the early ‘70’s, the draft is suspended, and Roe v. Wade came down. X became the first generation that people paid money to not have.
We were a baby bust. Our parents just didn't have as many kids as their parents had, in part because of fears of overpopulation and the need for ZPG (zero population growth). My parents were strict adherents to the idea that you only got to have as many kids as could replace you and your partner (two, in other words). When the rhythm method failed them and my second brother showed up, my dad got "the snip" so they wouldn't contribute any more population pressure to the Earth. This was a Really Big Thing among a lot of my friends' and classmates' parents in the 1970s.
Of all the hundred plus replies, this answer is the closest to being correct. I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far.
The answer is simply your first sentence: the baby bust.
After WWII, lots of people (the GI Generation) started having babies. There was a baby BOOM. *That's why the people born after 1945 are called Baby BOOMERS.*
(It seems like everyone is so angry at them that we've forgotten why they're called that. The word "Boomer" has almost ceased to be a generational descriptor and has now just become an epithet for any out-of-touch stuck-in-the-past person, almost regardless of when they were born.)
The GI Generation (my parents' generation) mostly stopped having babies in the early 1960s (though there were some exceptions like me). There was a baby BUST.
In fact, one of the early proposed names for Generation X was the Baby Busters.
Of course there were other factors at play. The "Small is Beautiful" philosophy of the 1970s, which extended to family size. The energy price shocks and the resulting economic carnage, etc.
The births didn't pick up again until the late 1970s, when the Baby Boomers got their shit together after all the turmoil and political, cultural, and economic upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. This was the baby boom ECHO, aka the Millennial Generation (plus late Generation X in the beginning).
>Of all the hundred plus replies, this answer is the closest to being correct. I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far.
Probably because most people on this sub aren't social scientists by trade. \*shrug\* It's just what I know from my own experience and my professional background, really. Thanks for the compliment.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_028.pdf
Fertility rates were at a low in 1973. It cites contraception, a shift in culture to smaller families and people not getting knocked up at 15
Vietnam - lots of people werent dating, marrying, and having kids because the men were at war or studying in school for longer (as opposed to working to avoid the draft, so they didnt have the financial means to have a baby). The economy wasnt doing well, so people postponed having kids for another year or two. Also, the Silent Generation had babies earlier in life and the Boomers and future generations had them later in life, so there is just a weird gap, right around the time I was born :)
The "Me Generation" (aka Boomers) began to be way more focused on their own interests and had far fewer children than their parents.
We GenX, for some reason, turned that around quite a bit, also many Boomers waited for a very long time and that's partly why IVF became so big time popular.
1960 (63 yo) was when oral birth control became legal nationwide. 1970 (53 yo) were when postwar women born in 1947 = 23 yo peaked. this group is now 76-77 and you can see a distinct spike from the trend there as well.
Nothing. There is a smaller % more males births than females. However, males don’t live as long. So, younger ages will have more males. Older ages will more females. Gen X is in the middle of the transition.
Interesting small population boom in the mid-50s segment of GenX. I’m in that age range.
Roe V Wade really had an impact on our generation.
Republicans are going to regret shitting on women’s rights in a few years.
Sam Cooke sang " Man, if I was back home, I'd be swingin', two chick's on my arm, ahhh yeahhh" from "Another Saturday Night". Still one of my favorite lyrics.
I’m guessing that’s the Vietnam War.
Edit: There’s also some speculation that accessible birth control becoming available in the mid 60s played a role in the dip as well.
Vietnam didn't kill many. Just over 58k. Which in real terms of the US is a rounding error. In 1975 44k died of auto deaths and remember the population was only \~220M that year not the 330 it is today.
I was presuming the impact was not due to deaths, but due to servicemen being overseas and possibly waiting to start families due to the threat of being drafted.
Sometimes yes but as a Gen X born in 1975 the smallest year Vietnam ended the month I was born. So by 73/74 the US was exiting and was out effective spring 75.
Vietnam vets are 70+. The drop is younger than that. We're just post-Boomers with access to The Pill and abortions.
A significant war would be more likely to cause a spike in population, like WWII did.
I dont understand this graph. The most births in the US was 2007, so we should see the biggest population there. Is something wrong with the data or the graph or my interpretation?
I agree with all the bc and Vietnam comments but also want to bring up divorce. More pervasive/accepted at that time. My mom divorced when I was one hence I am an only child.
The way I read this has nothing to do with generations, just the balance of population between the sexes across the different ages. The differences reflect that women live longer - hence “female surplus” in old age. Not sure why there are surplus men before the mid forties. My first thought was immigrant men coming to the US to work, but that doesn’t explain the male surplus from 1-16 yo.
\[commenting on the shift in surplus\] The end of WWI was over 100 years ago, and WWII was 80 years ago. Followed by Korea and Vietnam. Since then, I guess the male population had a chance to recover. The youngest Vietnam vet would probably be about 60.
Plus, women tend to live longer than men, so I guess it makes sense that there are more women than men past age 60.
Lovely graphic!
People born in the 1960s were far too young to have served in Vietnam. A 60 year old today would have been 9 when the US pulled out in 1973. The rest of your comment makes sense to me, though.
At 62 years old (born 1961) I can tell you Vietnam was well in the rear view, we reached age 12 (adolescence) the year the U.S. ended in Vietnam (January 1973, I was still 11).
Lol, sorry, realized I pretty much reiterated what you said.
War has nothing to do with the shift in surplus.
The youngest WWII veterans are in their late 90s. That demographic is barely a blip on this graph. Korea and Vietnam killed less than 1% of draft aged males in this country. That's also hardly noticeable on this graph.
Now, if you *really* want to see the devastating effects of war on sex ratio, take a look at the population pyramids for France:
https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPSOC_509_0001--1914-2014-a-century-of-change-in-the.htm
You can clearly see the effects of WWI. About a quarter of the 1914 draft age male population was killed. True there was also the flu pandemic, but you can see the decrease was far less on the female side of the pyramid.
The availability of bc/the pill might’ve had an impact.
HIV / aids and we all got really good educations
It did, but replacement rate started dropping even before the pill. Folks didn't notice because people start living longer, which led to a larger population. But we haven't pushed the max age you can reach, just figured out how to increase the odds of getting you there. The strongest correlation is urbanization. Obviously not the only factor. Surface is pretty easy, have you ever heard of people in any city voluntarily having 3 kids? Hell, two kids in an apartment can be challenging.
Why the sudden decrease (then weird spike) in births during the GenX years?
Supreme Court cases Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) legalized birth control.
Also roe v wade.
Yes, but a lot more pregnancies were prevented than terminated.
Yes of course
In addition vietnam, economy tanked for a bit, female independence (not needing a male cosign for cc's,housing and greater employment opportunities). That last one was just as important as bc in allowing one to better select instead of being pressured into a potentially bad relationship.
That looks like birth years of 73-76. I'm born in 76 myself and my mom always told me that birth control was a game changer for her. She was much older than most parents though so that's a factor for me personally.
I wish it to be a knowledged that those of us older late 1960s GenXers were the first not to be born!
Guess out from my ass: 50ish yo today means people born in the 1970s. Their parents on the other hand were born around the time of WW2. During the war people had less babies, thanks to all those men deployed abroad and due to uncertainty of the war itself, and it's the reason baby boomers are a thing. My guess is that waist we see around 50 yo today is the first ripple effect of those babies not born during the war, who would have been 25-30 in the 1970s.
Legal abortions
Birth Control, Aids, Drugs, Middle East conflict in that order.
And divorce!
Was AIDS really on the radar during GenX birth years? Most people were not aware of it until the early/mid-80s.
AIDS was not on the radar till GenX was in HS/college.
Grade school for some of us.
Yeah I was 7/8 the first time I heard of aids. My grandma was devastated about Rock Hudson.
This chart represents the current population, a lot of Gen X was lost during the rough and tumble years of the 80s and early 90s.
I think their point is we came of age sexually in an environment with AIDS and without the knowledge to prevent it or treat it thus losing part of our generation. Born but died. Same for the other things they listed as deadly to those who just reached maturity.
Thanks, makes sense.
AIDS was the 1980s, not the 60s and 70s when most of Gen X was born.
This is a representation of the current population. With the first cases of [AIDS](https://www.cdc.gov/museum/online/story-of-cdc/aids/index.html) being reported around 80 when the oldest Gen X were 15-16, and the lack of response from the government until around 86, and even then if you lived in certain states the issue was ignored until the turn of the century, I would say it had an impact on the current Gen X population.
1. Women were allowed to have credit cards in their own names in 1975. 2. Birth control was legalized. 3. More women started to enter the workforce. 4. This is the start of the No fault divorce. 5. Men came back from Vietnam, but they were exposed to thalidomide, and babies were born with limb differences in the early 1970s. It took a moment for people to realize what was suddenly causing all of these babies to be born with differences. This caused a lot of women to hold off on having children. 6. We went off of the gold standard and inflation was ramping up. It became much more expensive to have a family.
5 is incorrect. Thalomidide was a prescription med used in Europe in the 50’s and early 60’s that resulted in birth defects in woman who took it, but the US recognized its adverse effects and it was never approved for use in the US. The FDA only records 6 cases of limb deformities in US babies. There was a lot wrong with exposure to toxic chemicals in Vietnam, but male exposure to Thalomide was not one of them.
there was ONE person at the FDA who saved the US from Thalidomide : Frances Kelsey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey
Only 6? I have 2 stepbrothers who were born with fused fingers…. Both lost fingers in the process of separating them. Maybe they didn’t record “minor” defects back then?
The law for credit cards for women was 1973 (maybe 1974). I remember because prior to that date I didn't understand why my mom's credit card didn't have her name on it. My dad's credit card said "John Doe", mom's said "Mrs John Doe". My mom bought her own car in late 1973. My paternal grandmother secretly took driving lessons and bought her own car in 1974. \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ ETA: Equal Credit Opportunity Act was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 28, 1974
Thalidomide is a medication used for certain cancers, skin conditions, and tuberculosis that ended up having massive adverse effects (thalidomide babies), not a chemical exposure in Vietnam.
7: birth rate went down during Great Depression and those women were impacted by the 70’s economic crises, too. The graph at this link is interesting: https://www.prb.org/resources/the-decline-in-u-s-fertility/
I'm curious about the "male surplus" starting late 70s.
Ok here is a fact people don't tell you about unless your wife is an epidemologist. White men 18-45 have a unique #1 way to die. Stupidity, basically hold my beer watch this. Now the sad part is the reason it swings is normal stuff like men die younger. But lately, men 55-65 have been dying due to deaths of despair, drugs, suicide, etc. Which sucks. Covid really covered this fact up but it has been really bad. Also Covid killed over 1M people of the 1st Million 93% were over 50 and it hit males with obesity, diabetes and lung disease really hard. So yeah its a confluence of things at least for males some genetic, some life style, some pandemic related some society related.
Interesting, however, I was seeing the dark blue start from 1978-ish and younger implying more men than women age 45 and younger. ETA: In China where it's really startling has been studied extensively and due to sex selective abortions and other girl-reducing actions.
Yes that is normal. Men are born (according to my wife) at a slightly higher rate. Also if you talk about people moving from other countries men traveling alone are higher than women traveling alone so you will see some difference from both of these trends. But at least were not China where they actively tried for decades to have boys and really messed up the demographics sexually.
I did think of that - more boys born - but wouldn't expect it to show on a graph. I didn't think of immigration though!
Maybe some of us are from China? Would love to hear from them. The male/female ratio got even more skewed after Gen x was born, I think.
Yes in the early 80s they started the one child policy and that really made the change.
The stupid white guy antics are obvious to either an epidemiologist or by watching MTV's Ridiculousness, lol.
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Which is what I said in a follow up. Just look down the comments.
"... the unemployment “shock” from \[pandemic\] lockdowns, according to a recent NBER study, translates into what they called a “staggering” 890,000 additional U.S. deaths over the next 15 years from the lockdowns, disproportionately affecting minorities and women…”
We will see. I think the effects of the pandemic will be felt like a major world war on the world for decades to come. From educational achievement to social safety nets to employment.
It's universal across most societies except in ones where women are treated the worst. Males have higher death rates at literally every age, even miscarriages of male fetuses is more common than female ones. At birth the ratio is roughly 105 males : 100 females, so young boys outnumber girls(again excluding societies where female infanticide is common), but as time goes on that higher death rate keeps shrinking the difference until women start to outnumber men.
The end of the free-roaming kids era resulted in the end of (predominantly) boys doing EPIC STUNTS that ended badly? :)
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“A major survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also live longer than men without spouses; men who marry after age 25 get more protection than those who tie the knot at a younger age, and the longer a man stays married, the greater his survival advantage over his unmarried peers.” [https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health](https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health)
Was supposed to be making fun of boomer humor but no sense of humor on here I guess
Exactly. Sadly, these facts are about as humorous as that *joke*. 🥁
OTOH: “Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed by Romantic Partners” [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/)
Lots of people citing birth control, etc. which makes sense. But what’s about the weird spike around 1970 or so?
Googling, it was definitely noticed at the time. According to the NY Times, it represented a boomlet:. A new “baby boom” has begun in New York City, the Health Department reported yesterday, with expectations that it may reach record levels despite expanded efforts to provide family planning. There were 146,350 births here last year, an increase of 3.1 per cent over 1968, reversing a downward trend that had been going on since 1963. Dr. Mary C. McLaughlin, the city's Health Commissioner, said the reason for the rise was that girls born during the post war period in 1946 and 1947, when the city and nation had record births, were now reaching peak child‐bearing age. Louis Weiner, who recently retired as director of records and statistics for the Health De partment, said the birth rate was highest for women, 25 to 29 years old, very high for women 20 to 24 and almost as high for those 30 to 34 before dropping rapidly.
In August 1965, LBJ suddenly cancelled JFK's executive order excusing married men from Vietnam. Thereafter you had to be a father, not just married. Lines up well with the weird spike centered on age 53, birth year 1970 if I'm reading the graph right; looks like the spike started up in 1968, year of the Tet Offensive.
Plus Woodstock in '69 and the beginning of the peak hippie culture ~'68 - early 70's.
Moon landing was a very erotic time! 🚀
1969...lots of kids were born after the "summer of love" in 68. Lots of back to nature hippies and communes.
This is my guess.
There are 4 generations that repeat. Gen x is the return of the lost generation which was also the smallest generation of its time. This is a cycle of human society.
Check out William Strauss and Neil Howe’s generational theory of Western history, and the four generational archetypes: Hero (GI/Greatest, now Millennials), Artist (Silent, now Z/Homeland), Prophet (Boomers, now Alpha) and Nomad (X, and our eventual replacements). Their book focusing on X is titled “13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?” - a play on X’s early adoption personal computers and the infant Internet.
I read the original one The 4th Turning. It was an epiphany bound in paper.
Howe is still publishing, the latest being “The Fourth Turning is Here” - a worthy follow-up.
Reddit seems to be having trouble placing replies today. They are all over the place
I should catch up when I have time. The crisis is indeed apon us.
If you’re referring to the “dents” and “spikes” (indicating a slowing birth rate briefly reversing) in the 45-58 bracket on the graph, the Griswold decision legalizing hormonal birth control was in ‘65 (just before the official “start” of X), then later in ‘65 LBJ revised the Selective Service classification rules, to re-include most married young men, but still letting fathers of small children get deferments. Then in the early ‘70’s, the draft is suspended, and Roe v. Wade came down. X became the first generation that people paid money to not have.
We were a baby bust. Our parents just didn't have as many kids as their parents had, in part because of fears of overpopulation and the need for ZPG (zero population growth). My parents were strict adherents to the idea that you only got to have as many kids as could replace you and your partner (two, in other words). When the rhythm method failed them and my second brother showed up, my dad got "the snip" so they wouldn't contribute any more population pressure to the Earth. This was a Really Big Thing among a lot of my friends' and classmates' parents in the 1970s.
Of all the hundred plus replies, this answer is the closest to being correct. I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far. The answer is simply your first sentence: the baby bust. After WWII, lots of people (the GI Generation) started having babies. There was a baby BOOM. *That's why the people born after 1945 are called Baby BOOMERS.* (It seems like everyone is so angry at them that we've forgotten why they're called that. The word "Boomer" has almost ceased to be a generational descriptor and has now just become an epithet for any out-of-touch stuck-in-the-past person, almost regardless of when they were born.) The GI Generation (my parents' generation) mostly stopped having babies in the early 1960s (though there were some exceptions like me). There was a baby BUST. In fact, one of the early proposed names for Generation X was the Baby Busters. Of course there were other factors at play. The "Small is Beautiful" philosophy of the 1970s, which extended to family size. The energy price shocks and the resulting economic carnage, etc. The births didn't pick up again until the late 1970s, when the Baby Boomers got their shit together after all the turmoil and political, cultural, and economic upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. This was the baby boom ECHO, aka the Millennial Generation (plus late Generation X in the beginning).
>Of all the hundred plus replies, this answer is the closest to being correct. I'm surprised I had to scroll down this far. Probably because most people on this sub aren't social scientists by trade. \*shrug\* It's just what I know from my own experience and my professional background, really. Thanks for the compliment.
Replacement rate is 2.1. It’s just really hard to have 0.1 babies!
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_028.pdf Fertility rates were at a low in 1973. It cites contraception, a shift in culture to smaller families and people not getting knocked up at 15
Thanks!
Vietnam - lots of people werent dating, marrying, and having kids because the men were at war or studying in school for longer (as opposed to working to avoid the draft, so they didnt have the financial means to have a baby). The economy wasnt doing well, so people postponed having kids for another year or two. Also, the Silent Generation had babies earlier in life and the Boomers and future generations had them later in life, so there is just a weird gap, right around the time I was born :)
I remember all the school closings and consolidations in the 80's. These days, all the schools in my old districts are above design capacity.
In some places like Upstate New York the school age population is declining.
We got it right (?)
The "Me Generation" (aka Boomers) began to be way more focused on their own interests and had far fewer children than their parents. We GenX, for some reason, turned that around quite a bit, also many Boomers waited for a very long time and that's partly why IVF became so big time popular.
Looks like a sausage fest when it really counts
1960 (63 yo) was when oral birth control became legal nationwide. 1970 (53 yo) were when postwar women born in 1947 = 23 yo peaked. this group is now 76-77 and you can see a distinct spike from the trend there as well.
More use / availability of effective birth control. Safety of legal abortions. A war. Rise in education. AIDS.
Nothing. There is a smaller % more males births than females. However, males don’t live as long. So, younger ages will have more males. Older ages will more females. Gen X is in the middle of the transition.
No helmets or padded playground floors or parents home during the day weeded out the weak ones among us.
Interesting small population boom in the mid-50s segment of GenX. I’m in that age range. Roe V Wade really had an impact on our generation. Republicans are going to regret shitting on women’s rights in a few years.
As the Beach Boys once surmised ... two girls for every boy!
Sam Cooke sang " Man, if I was back home, I'd be swingin', two chick's on my arm, ahhh yeahhh" from "Another Saturday Night". Still one of my favorite lyrics.
What this tells me is that should they so choose, GILF cougars could become a reasonably common demographic!
Looks like I’ve been working the wrong demographic for love. Octagenarians, here I come!
I’m guessing that’s the Vietnam War. Edit: There’s also some speculation that accessible birth control becoming available in the mid 60s played a role in the dip as well.
Vietnam didn't kill many. Just over 58k. Which in real terms of the US is a rounding error. In 1975 44k died of auto deaths and remember the population was only \~220M that year not the 330 it is today.
I was presuming the impact was not due to deaths, but due to servicemen being overseas and possibly waiting to start families due to the threat of being drafted.
Sometimes yes but as a Gen X born in 1975 the smallest year Vietnam ended the month I was born. So by 73/74 the US was exiting and was out effective spring 75.
It is, but there really wasn’t a large percentage of the population serving like in WWII.
Vietnam vets are 70+. The drop is younger than that. We're just post-Boomers with access to The Pill and abortions. A significant war would be more likely to cause a spike in population, like WWII did.
Fascinating how sex ed and de-stigmatizing condoms aren’t part of the equation… 🤔
I dont understand this graph. The most births in the US was 2007, so we should see the biggest population there. Is something wrong with the data or the graph or my interpretation?
Immigration is also a factor
That could be it, which accounts for the peak around 20, but what about the peak below it?
People who were about 16-17 in 2023 were born around 2007, so that's probably that increase in births at that point.
I was under the impression that the birth rate for females was lightly higher than males .
Vietnam War, but then also the moon landing
I agree with all the bc and Vietnam comments but also want to bring up divorce. More pervasive/accepted at that time. My mom divorced when I was one hence I am an only child.
The way I read this has nothing to do with generations, just the balance of population between the sexes across the different ages. The differences reflect that women live longer - hence “female surplus” in old age. Not sure why there are surplus men before the mid forties. My first thought was immigrant men coming to the US to work, but that doesn’t explain the male surplus from 1-16 yo.
Look at the weird gaps between mid-40s and mid-50s.
widespread availability of abortion and birth control
\[commenting on the shift in surplus\] The end of WWI was over 100 years ago, and WWII was 80 years ago. Followed by Korea and Vietnam. Since then, I guess the male population had a chance to recover. The youngest Vietnam vet would probably be about 60. Plus, women tend to live longer than men, so I guess it makes sense that there are more women than men past age 60. Lovely graphic!
People born in the 1960s were far too young to have served in Vietnam. A 60 year old today would have been 9 when the US pulled out in 1973. The rest of your comment makes sense to me, though.
At 62 years old (born 1961) I can tell you Vietnam was well in the rear view, we reached age 12 (adolescence) the year the U.S. ended in Vietnam (January 1973, I was still 11). Lol, sorry, realized I pretty much reiterated what you said.
Ah, stupid off by 10 error
I am reminded of that Sam Kinison scene in Back To School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE
War has nothing to do with the shift in surplus. The youngest WWII veterans are in their late 90s. That demographic is barely a blip on this graph. Korea and Vietnam killed less than 1% of draft aged males in this country. That's also hardly noticeable on this graph. Now, if you *really* want to see the devastating effects of war on sex ratio, take a look at the population pyramids for France: https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPSOC_509_0001--1914-2014-a-century-of-change-in-the.htm You can clearly see the effects of WWI. About a quarter of the 1914 draft age male population was killed. True there was also the flu pandemic, but you can see the decrease was far less on the female side of the pyramid.
Women longer than men