Baby Boom History

American History: After Second World War, a Baby Boom

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World War Two finally ended in August of nineteen forty-five. Life in the United States began to return to normal. Soldiers began to come home and find jobs. Factories stopped producing war materials and began to produce goods for peacetime.

At the same time, other changes began to take place in society. Many Americans were no longer satisfied with their old ways of life. They wanted something new and better. And many were now earning enough money to find that better life.

Millions of Americans moved out of cities and small towns. They bought newly built homes in suburban communities outside busy cities. Today, we look at the growth of suburbs and other changes in the American population in the years after World War Two.

WIFE: “And we’ll have the living room right in here, and the kitchen right here so we can see the children playing in the yard.”

HUSBAND: “Yeah, the children … Children? Say, how many are you planning on? Not more than six, I hope. Maybe I better add a few more rooms back here.”

A couple in a marketing film for the home building industry.

The United States counts its population every ten years. The first census took place in seventeen ninety. At that time, the country had about four million people. One hundred years later, in eighteen ninety, the population was sixty-three million.

By nineteen fifty, there were more than one hundred fifty million people living in the United States.

In the early years of America, the average mother had eight to ten children. Living conditions were hard. Many children died at an early age. Families needed a lot of help on the farm. So it was good to have many children.

But over the years birth rates fell. Families began to have fewer and fewer children. By nineteen hundred, the average woman had only three or four children. In nineteen thirty-six, during the Great Depression, the average American mother gave birth to only two children.

Things changed after World War Two.

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Suddenly, it seemed like every family started having babies. Parents were hopeful about the future. There were lots of jobs. People felt the need for a family and security after the long, difficult years of the war. From nineteen fifty to nineteen sixty, the number of children between the ages of five and fourteen increased by more than ten million.

The increase in births after the war produced what became known as the baby boom generation. An estimated seventy-eight million Americans were born between nineteen forty-six and nineteen sixty-four.

Budget cuts could lead to Alzheimer's boom / UCLA Today

The principal treatment target of the past 20 years (amyloid) has been hit (meaning that some of the treatment actually succeeded in removing the amyloid from the brain of Alzheimer's patients). The removal of amyloid has not changed the disease course. There is not enough funding to expand the treatment and prevention efforts to include other targets and, after severe financial losses, the pharmaceutical industry is beginning to abandon the effort. There are many promising treatment and prevention strategies that will not be investigated quickly enough to make any difference to the mass of boomers who have begun to succumb to Alzheimer's this year. The stunning thing about this whole "slow-motion train wreck" is that many of the boomers have seen their parents suffer and die with the disease yet seem unaware that: 1) their own risk (and their children's risk) of getting Alzheimer's is much higher; and 2) that the disease might not be just treatable but preventable. I can only assume that there is either a pervasive lack of understanding of the fact that there is just as much hope with Alzheimer's as there was for AIDS, and/or, because Alzheimer's is a "mental" disease, the stigma associated with losing that which makes us human (brain function) is "gagging" this group from advocating for themselves — as well as their children and society at large. I can only assume that there is either a pervasive lack of understanding of the fact that there is just as much hope with Alzheimer's as there was for AIDS, and/or, because Alzheimer's is a "mental" disease, the stigma associated with losing that which makes us human (brain function) is "gagging" this group from advocating for themselves — as well as their children and society at large.

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