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9 - Twentieth-Century American Population Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Richard Easterlin
Edited by
Stanley L. Engerman  and
Robert E. Gallman
Richard Easterlin
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Stanley L. Engerman
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York
Robert E. Gallman
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

Twentieth-century American population growth has been remarkable in many respects. Mortality has been reduced at a rate never before seen. There has been a gigantic boom and bust in childbearing. With fertility currently low and life expectancy high, population aging has emerged as a new concern. The trend in the spatial distribution of population has departed sharply from that in the nineteenth century, as new directions of internal migration have appeared, and the origins of international migration have shifted from Europe to Latin America and Asia. These developments are due partly to economic conditions, but public policy and other factors have also been at work. This chapter takes up, in turn, fertility, mortality, internal migration, and international migration. It concludes with an analysis of the implications of population aging for future economic growth.

FERTILITY

Before World War II it was confidently assumed that American population growth was grinding to a halt. This assumption was subsequently belied by the huge upsurge in population growth following World War II, described by one scholar of the postwar period as “perhaps the most unexpected and remarkable feature of the time” (see Figure 9.1, top panel). This population boom, which peaked in the late fifties, was followed by an equally surprising population “bust.” Although few scholars in the late 1950s expected the undiminished continuation of the high growth rates prevailing at that time, no one foresaw the rapidity and depth of the subsequent decline. This boom and bust pattern of population growth is one of the most dramatic and unanticipated developments of the post—World War II period.

Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Economic History of the United States , pp. 505 - 548
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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