Definition
Baby boom: The term “baby boom” generally pertains to a period of exceptional increase in fertility rates. It most commonly refers to the massive number of births in many developed Western countries following the end of World War II, a phenomenon that sustained for approximately two decades (Porta and Last 2018), with some variation in timing, duration, and intensity. The large generation of babies born during this period is referred to as baby boomers (Doyle 2016a).
Baby bust: In some contexts, the term “baby bust” refers specifically to a precipitous decline in fertility in some developed countries such as the USA between 1965 and 1976, which occurred immediately following the postwar baby boom (Doyle 2016b). Today, it is used more broadly to describe the sustained decline in fertility or sustained low fertility around the world (Longman 2004; Robbins and Smith 2017; Smeeding 2014).
Overview
The Baby Boom
The postwar period witnessed a substantial increase in birth rates...
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Li, J.X., Shu, B. (2021). Baby Boom/Baby Bust. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22009-9_653
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