Baby Boom to Birth Dearth and Beyond

The processes of fertility change in the United States are structured in a way that exaggerates the upward and downward trends in annual measures of fertility, relative to underlying trends in the average number of children that women have during their reproductive years of life. In the 1950s, we witnessed a period of relatively inflated fertility; in the 1970s we are apparently going through a period of relatively depressed fertility. The childbearing expectations of young women suggest that annual fertility rates will rise in the near future, but do not provide any reason to believe that there will be a substantial increase in fertility comparable to that occurring between the 1930s and the 1950s. The causes of swings in fertility rates are not yet fully known, but some promising hypotheses have been proposed and are being tested.