What is the Baby Boom?

Answer 1

Answer When the KOREAN War AND WOLD WAR TWO was over, millions of men returned to the U.S. who had been overseas for as much as 4 years. Over the next 20 years these millions of men married millions of women and created millions of babies.

The number of babies was much greater than in years prior to these wars. It is said that without the economic prosperity and GI Bill of the postwar years the baby boom and economic boom would not have been as large as it was. The prosperity, and GI Bill in addition to the confidence these young men had (after defeating the enemy) created a fertile ground for the creation of many families.

The baby boom was also very marked in other Allied countries, too - for example, in Britain.

The baby boom was the result of the end of World War II. Returning soldiers and sailors got married, and started to produce families. This produced a "bulge" in the population curve of most countries which was named "The Baby Boom". The children of post World War II families created challenges to certain government agencies, such as education, health, and social services.

These children are defined as those born between the years of 1946 to 1964. Some sociologists place the latter date as 1956, a ten year spread, as the boom after World War 2 and the rest of the boom after the Korean War.

As a Boomer, I remember attending school with class sizes of 36 to 40 children as a normal class size. While we put a strain on the school system, the children of the boom were the most literate and well trained generation as evidenced by the SAT scores of 1967...the highest scores ever made by a "class".

Technically, a baby boom is a statistical variation "bulge" in the prediction of population growth. The "Baby Boomers" were the first statistical proof of this bulge. It also affected the census counts, government representation in the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The term "Baby Boom" does not only represents a number in population figures but also the cultural effects caused by the baby boomers themselves. They were responsible for "free living", "Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll", "Hippies" and the changing of social and spiritual mores of all three major places such as the USA, European Nations, and Canada. (Edited 10-11-10 by contributor editor)