This chart, from Khan Academy, expresses the fertility rate in terms of births per 1,000 population:
Again, note that celebrity population scientist Paul Ehrlich was wrong the day his The Population Bomb book was published in about 1968.
The post WW2 baby boom occurred for many reasons. Just as the recent pandemic has resulted in people vigorously pursing life activities once relieved from home confinement and fear, the post War eras saw an explosion in servicemen (and almost all were men) embracing life with vigor. This, coupled with an huge economic expansion (especially post Great Depression and war years) due to the U.S. being the only major industrial nation that had not been destroyed by war, led to the growth in families, new home construction, and the growth of suburbs and public schools.
The wars also had a profound effect on education. Immediately after WW2, returning vets attended college, funded by the GI Bill. This began a sharp increase in college graduates. In the 1960s, due to the draft and its deferment of those in college, many more men enrolled in college (only males are mandated for military conscription in the U.S.) to defer getting called up for the military. This, in turn, led to an explosion in graduate education as students sought to remain in college as long as possible.
Since almost all service members were men, the veteran’s education benefits resulted in a lopsided ratio of men to women in college which peaked right after WW2, but stretched again in the 1960s due to deferment eligibility. Since staying in college as long as possible became important to many, this led to the sharp growth of graduate education in the U.S. I’ll have a post on this, coming soon.
Since 1980, women outnumber men as 4 year college graduates – that’s for 43 years now.
Globally, the more education that women have, the lower the fertility rate. For this reason, the few countries that still see high fertility rates may seen a birth collapse very soon – because in many of those countries, more and more women are obtaining higher levels of education and skills.
