Jim Penman argues the baby boom wasn't caused by World War II, but by how economic hardship in childhood rewired people's brains. Kids who survived the Great Depression and Britain's Hungry Forties had higher fertility later. Other wars, from Napoleon to the Civil War, actually saw birth rates drop after fighting ended.
Talk about the baby boom. What was the cause of that, or what is the perceived cause of that, and what do you think? Well, people say the baby boom was caused by the Second World War. It doesn't fit with the lessons of history, because if you look at the effects of major wars, they almost always cause the birth rate to plummet. So after the First World War, the birth rate plummeted. After the American Civil War, birth rate plummeted. After the Napoleonic War, it plummeted. That's a normal effect of a war. So why was the Second World War so different? Well, in fact, it wasn't. It wasn't the war itself. It was the Depression. Children who go through a depression in their late childhood tend to have more children because their brains are permanently more sensitive to dopamine. This is not just the effect of children who went through the Great Depression. It's also the Hungry Forties in Britain, which was a really, really tough time. And there was a mini boom that went on after that. And the peak of the boom was the kids that experienced it in this period of late childhood.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
