Medicine: Baby Boom

The U.S. birth rate has hit a ten-year high in 1941, with an estimated total of 2,500,000 new babies. Every minute during the year, more than four babies were born. Such was the summing up of the U.S. Census Bureau last week. Reasons for this increase, which represents a gain of 140,000 babies over the 2,360,339 born last year, were given by Dr. Philip M. Hauser, assistant chief statistician for population. Said he:

¶ “The large crop of babies born after the boys got back from the World War have now become old enough to have babies of their own.”

¶ The defense boom, like all periods of prosperity, has brought a boom in baby production.

¶ “People’s emotions are disturbed. Having a family tends to keep a man out of the draft. There is also a natural urge to produce offspring before being shot to pieces.”

Despite this year’s increase, Dr. Hauser and Acting Census Director Vergil Daniel Reed were gloomy about the future. Declared Dr. Reed: “The momentum of our population growth may carry us forward to 150,000,000 or more in the next two generations—about 1980—but, unless factors change, growth will stop and a slow recession probably set in.”