Baby Boom Years Research Articles

From Lavender Menace to Queer Nation: the transformation of lesbian identity in the baby boom era

Women of the early baby boom years in the U.S. came out into an environment in which same-sex desire was stigmatized and criminalized. For working-class lesbians, the bar scene provided an environment in which women could find companionship and a way to live a life decoupled from traditional heterosexual roles. For middle class women, bar life was fraught with legal and social risk, and some–mostly white–women worked to establish a more “socially acceptable” communal life through organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis. As the women’s movement flourished in the late 1960s and 1970s, women born in the early years of the baby boom (1946–1950) created distinctive lesbian feminist cultures and identities. In contrast to early baby boomers, women born at the tail end of the baby boom (1960–1964) came out in a vastly different cultural context. Second-wave feminism had already peaked, the AIDS epidemic and debates about sexuality changed the context for lesbian identity and activism, and organizing by women of color created the development of an intersectional view of lesbian identity and activism. Through an analysis of feminist magazines, newsletters, and texts of the late 1960s through the 1990s, this paper explores the cultural contexts through which radical lesbian feminist identities arose and, for a period, flourished in the U.S. By the end of the 1980s and 1990s, as second-wave feminism declined, lesbian feminist identity shifted. Over the last decades of the twentieth century, new queer forms of identification emerged, coupled with a decline of lesbian identification among younger people. I argue that these new forms represent both continuity and disruption with earlier forms of lesbian identification.

The Mid-Twentieth Century Baby Boom and the Role of Social Influence. An Agent-Based Modelling Approach

Around the middle of the 20th century, most Western countries experienced a surge in birth rates, called the Baby Boom. This boom was unexpected at the time and the underlying mechanisms are still not entirely clear. It was characterized by high levels of inter- and intra-country variability in fertility, as some regions even experienced fertility decline during the Boom. In this paper, we suggest that social influence processes, propelling a shift towards two-child families, might have played an important role in the observed changes in fertility. Interactions in social networks can lead new types of childbearing behaviour to diffuse widely and thereby induce changes in fertility at the macro level. The emergence and diffusion of a two-child norm resulted in homogenization of fertility behaviour across regions. Overall, this led to a reduction of childlessness and thus an increase of fertility, as more people aspired to have at least two children. Yet, in those regions where larger family sizes were still common, the two-child norm contributed to a fertility decline. To explore the role of social influence with analytical rigor, we make use of agent-based computational modelling. We explicate the underlying behavioural assumptions in a formal model and assess their implications by submitting this model to computational simulation experiments. We use Belgium as a case study, since it exhibited large variability in fertility in a relatively small population during the Baby Boom years. We use census data to generate realistic starting conditions and to empirically validate the outcomes that our model generates. Our results show that the proposed mechanism could explain an important part of the variability of fertility trends during the Baby Boom era.

Generational Differences in the 5-Year Incidence of Age-Related Macular Degeneration

Whether a reported decline in the risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD) continued for people born during the Baby Boom years (1946-1964) or later is unknown. These data are important to plan for ocular health care needs in the 21st century. To determine whether the 5-year risk for AMD declined by generation and to identify factors that contributed to improvement in risk. Data came from the longitudinal cohort Beaver Dam Eye Study (March 1, 1988, through September 15, 1990, and March 1, 1993, through June 15, 1995) and the Beaver Dam Offspring Study (June 8, 2005, through August 4, 2008, and July 12, 2010, through March 21, 2013). These population-based studies examined residents of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, aged 43 to 84 years in 1987 through 1988 and their adult offspring aged 21 to 84 years in 2005 through 2008. A total of 4819 participants were at risk for developing AMD based on fundus images obtained at baseline visits. Data were analyzed from February 18, 2016, through June 22, 2017, with additional analyses ending September 22, 2017. Fundus images were graded for AMD using the Wisconsin Age-related Maculopathy Grading System. The incidence of AMD was defined as the presence at the 5-year follow-up examination of pure geographic atrophy or exudative macular degeneration, any type of drusen with pigmentary abnormalities, or soft indistinct drusen without pigmentary abnormalities. Among the 4819 participants, the mean (SD) baseline age of the cohort was 54 (11) years; 2117 were men (43.9%) and 2702 were women (56.1%). The 5-year age- and sex-adjusted incidence of AMD was 8.8% in the Greatest Generation (born during 1901-1924), 3.0% in the Silent Generation (born during 1925-1945), 1.0% in the Baby Boom Generation (born during 1946-1964), and 0.3% in Generation X (born during 1965-1984). Adjusting for age and sex, each generation was more than 60% less likely to develop AMD than the previous generation (relative risk, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.24-0.46). The generational association (relative risk, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.28 to 0.57) remained significant after adjusting for age, sex, smoking, educational attainment, exercise, levels of non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, statins, and multivitamins. The 5-year risk for AMD declined by birth cohorts throughout the 20th century. Factors that explain this decline in risk are not known. However, this pattern is consistent with reported declines in risks for cardiovascular disease and dementia, suggesting that aging Baby Boomers may experience better retinal health at older ages than did previous generations.

THE SUSTAINABLE MICRO-SCALE MOVEMENT OF COMMUNITIES: CASE STUDIES OF SUBDIVIDED DEVELOPMENT AND ADAPTIVE REUSE OF SHARED SPACE IN NEW YORK CITY

1. INTRODUCTION In New York City a decline in manufacturing has propelled social and economic changes that have transformed certain districts [1,2]. Unused building stock there has been the basis for adaptive reuse yielding new housing for families of varying compositions. The constant pressure of the need for affordable housing has resulted in the conversion of existing abandoned industrial structures, providing a green, environmentally friendly alternative to new construction [3,4,5]. Adaptive reuse provides an opportunity to bring a building up to current codes, to make the layout and building systems more appropriate and efficient, and to help revitalize neighborhoods. The nineteenth through the middle of the twentieth centuries were characterized by urban environments which provided manufacturing jobs and the municipal services and education that supported them [6]. American cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh became boom-towns as people followed employment opportunities and moved to these locations throughout this period [7,8,9]. In the decades after World War II, the creation of highways and freeways–including the interstate highway system that stretched east to west and north to south–led to suburbanization, exemplified by Long Island's mushrooming Levit-town and many more like it [5,10]. These were the Baby Boom years. The suburban sprawl ultimately resulted in the creation of mega cities like New York City. Families typically consisted of a father, mother, and at least two children [16]. This trend was supported by strong manufacturing industries and plentiful space that allowed much of the population to fulfill the American dream of home ownership [2,11]. As labor cost increased due to stricter labor laws, unions, increasing land cost, and higher taxes, many manufacturers began a search for less costly environments, moving first to locations in the less expensive suburbs and then to the South [4,8]. Eventually, American factories moved overseas to places such as China, other Asian countries, and South America. This became known as out sourcing manufacturing [6,7,12]. With the subsequent boom town collapse that began in the 1980s and continued through the new millennium, old U.S. industrial cities faced declining populations, and Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and their like were soon deserted by those who could no longer find employment there [14,40]. City populations decreased by as much as 50% and in some places even more steeply [13]. According to the U.S. Census (figure 1) [13,14], among American cities only New York City's and Los Angeles's populations have grown since the 1980s. Migration for employment opportunities became common and members per household, and households of one or two became not uncommon [15,16]. Typical housing no longer required a big space for shelter and a lawn or garden, and many people looked for smaller units [11,16]. Smaller working spaces made micro-scale businesses possible. New York City is an example of this change. Left with abandoned super block manufacturing buildings such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Brooklyn Army Terminal and retired infrastructure, New York City has looked for ways to repurpose these structures [10,17]. Super block, old manufacturing buildings and factories still stand, but in New York and elsewhere some have become mixed-use spaces. The goal of this paper is to examine how New York City served the public by providing working and living space through the conversion of existing super block buildings and creating new public spaces out of under-used or abandoned infrastructure. Comparative case studies are conducted focusing on the micro-scale movement and renewed use of old infrastructure. It considers a future model for sub-divided building spaces and repurposed structures providing shared, public venues as it analyzes this movement structurally and the changes it has wrought on local communities.

Study Finds Many in VA System Are Hepatitis C Positive

Implementation of recommended one–time screening of Baby Boomers would identify an additional 51,000 veterans infected with the hepatitis C virus, according to researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Investigators looked at records for all veterans in the VA health care system from 1999 to 2012 who had a VA outpatient visit in 2012. Broken down by birth cohort, of the 5.5 million vets who were seen, hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening was performed for 42% of those born before 1945, 64% of those born in 1945–1965 (Baby Boomers), and 58% of those born after 1965, Lisa I. Backus, MD, of the VA Palo Alto (CA) Health Care System reported at the latest annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. In the Baby Boomer cohort, 13% of veterans screened had HCV antibodies and 10% were infected with HCV, compared with 3% and 1.7%, respectively, for veterans born before 1945 and 2% and 1% of those born after 1965. Dr. Backus noted that in excess of 95% of veterans who screen positive for HCV antibodies are subsequently tested for HCV viral load and/or genotyping. Dr. Backus noted that the VA population in general has a higher HCV infection rate than the general public—6.1% for veterans vs. 2.5% for all Americans. When HCV infection prevalence rates were extrapolated to veterans in the Baby Boom cohort who were not yet screened—approximately 900,000—the data suggest that as many as 51,000 additional veterans would be identified with HCV infection with full birth cohort screening, Dr. Backus reported. This study underlines the need for one–time screening for individuals born during the Baby Boom years, she said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force both recommend one–time screening for this birth cohort. “Without care and treatment, 1.7 million Americans with HCV will develop cirrhosis, 400,000 will develop hepatocellular carcinoma, and more than 1 million will go on to die of HCV–related disease. And obviously, they can't get into care if they don't know they have hepatitis C,” Dr. Backus said, citing CDC data. “Our work should also serve as an example to other health care organizations to prompt them to assess their own HCV screening rates and HCV prevalence rates and to make such rates public.” The study was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Backus had no relevant conflict of interest.

Out of the Closet and Into the Trenches: Gay Male Baby Boomers, Aging, and HIV/AIDS

Regardless of HIV status, all gay male Baby Boomers are aging in a context strongly shaped by HIV/AIDS. For this subcohort within the Baby Boom generation, the disproportionately high volume of AIDS deaths among gay men aged 25-44 years at the epidemic's peak (1987-1996) created a cohort effect, decimating their social networks and shaping their personal and social lives during the epidemic, throughout their life course, and into later years. But despite these lasting effects on an entire cohort of gay men, relevant scholarship narrowly focuses on older HIV-positive gay men using clinical, psychological, and social network approaches. It thus makes inadequate use of the life course perspective, which, by attention to timing, agency, and interdependence, can uncover the myriad interlocking and longitudinal aspects of the epidemic that affect this group. This article argues for the application of this latter approach to research into the lasting impacts of HIV/AIDS on this cohort of gay men. We examine HIV/AIDS mortality within this cohort at the epidemic's height, these deaths' concentration in urban gay communities, and the growing and increasingly diverse population of HIV-positive gay men born in the Baby Boom Years. Our conclusion suggests that a fuller examination of the role of HIV/AIDS in the lives of gay male Baby Boomers, using a life course perspective, is critical to appreciating this generation's heterogeneity and to expanding knowledge of how later life is shaped by the intersection between historical events, personal biography, and social and community ties.

A Critical Review on Definition of the Baby-boom years, Labor market shocks, and Inter-generational income transfer

A Critical Review on Definition of the Baby-boom years, Labor market shocks, and Inter-generational income transfer

The apartment plot: urban living in American film and popular culture, 1945 to 1975

Rethinking the significance of films including Pillow Talk , Rear Window , and The Seven Year Itch , Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines the popularity of the “apartment plot,” her term for stories in which the apartment functions as a central narrative device. From the baby boom years into the 1970s, the apartment plot was not only key to films; it also surfaced in TV shows, Broadway plays, literature, and comic strips, from The Honeymooners and The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Subways are for Sleeping and Apartment 3-G . By identifying the apartment plot as a film genre, Wojcik reveals affinities between movies generally viewed as belonging to such distinct genres as film noir, romantic comedy, and melodrama. She analyzes the apartment plot as part of a mid-twentieth-century urban discourse, showing how it offers a vision of home centered on values of community, visibility, contact, mobility, impermanence, and porousness that contrasts with views of home as private, stable, and family-based. Wojcik suggests that the apartment plot presents a philosophy of urbanism related to the theories of Jane Jacobs and Henri Lefebvre. Urban apartments were important spaces for negotiating gender, sexuality, race, and class in mid-twentieth-century America.

How Late Can First Births Be Postponed? Some Illustrative Population-level Calculations

I shift, stretch, and transform the observed cohort age-schedule of first birth for Danish women born in 1963 to see how late the mean age at first birth could plausibly shift. Constraints of two kinds are placed on the ultimate distribution of first births. First, no more than one-third of first births can occur after age 35. This constraint allows postponement without radical changes in childlessness or parity distribution. Second, I preserve some variability in the age at first birth by keeping the standard deviation of first birth above 4 years, the minimum value observed for Denmark during the baby boom years. Under these constraints, I find that mean ages at first birth of at least 33 years are plausible. This would represent a further increase of about 4 years in the mean age at first birth seen in recent periods. I conclude that the depressed levels of fertility seen due to postponement could continue for decades before limits are reached.

The Baby Boom and Nonmetropolitan Population Change, 1975‐1990

ABSTRACT Both economic and demographic contexts influence aggregate migration streams at the regional scale. The influence of demographic and economic context on aggregate migration at the nonmetropolitan scale, however, remains unstudied. This paper presents analysis based on 1980 and 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data related to age cohort effects on nonmetropolitan population change. The analysis provides enhanced understanding of how demographic factors like the baby boom might influence population movements into and out of nonmetropolitan regions. Using modified age‐cohort decomposition techniques, the analysis demonstrates how the fluctuations in nonmetropolitan population growth between 1975 and 1990 are tied to the differential migration flows of the peak baby boom years (those born between 1955 and 1964). The analysis further demonstrates how fluctuations in nonmetropolitan population growth across regions are tied to migration flows of these baby boomers. Significant variation remains within regions.

Insights from parity status life tables for the 20th century U.S.

Parity status life table (PSLT) models show the implications of a set of age–parity-specific birth rates, and describe how women move through successive parities as they progress through their childbearing years. Here PSLT values for the U.S. are presented for the years 1917–1997 and for cohorts born 1902–1963. Cohort PSLTs show fertility levels similar to cohort TFRs, while period PSLTs generally track the conventional period TFR. Nonetheless, using rates specific to parity can increase the susceptibility of period rates to timing influences. Period PSLTs for the Baby Boom years show over 40% of women ultimately having 5 or more children, while cohort PSLTs show that no birth cohort ever had 30% of its members at those parities. The approximate regularity that has characterized the level of American fertility since the 1970s extends to patterns of children ever born as well. Two children are by far the most common family size, with about one-third of all women having that number. About one-sixth of all women ended childbearing at each of parities 0, 1, and 3. The remaining sixth of women have attained parity 4 or higher, with very few women having more than 6 children.

Trends in American family size diversity

How diverse is American society and are Americans becoming more or less diverse? Contemporary discussions claim high and increasing diversity, but analyze few actual trends. This paper examines completed family size diversity from 1940 to 2000 by race and across US states. For all groups, regions and the USA as a whole, family size diversity decreased significantly, produced by a combination of fewer small and large families and a general decline in regionally-based differences. Both within and across states the diversity declined in two stages, but regional clusters of states followed different paths. A cluster of Southern Mountain states showed the greatest contrast. Between the 1940s and the early 1970s, a slight baby boom rise in diversity among homogeneous states, was counterbalanced by declining diversity in more diverse states. Black women in all states and white women in Mainstream and Other states showed similar trends during the baby boom years, while white women in the Southern Mountain states failed to show a baby boom increase in large families. For childbearing completed since 1975, regional patterns disappeared and both the range and level of diversity declined further. A national and essentially homogeneous culture of childbearing, initiated during the baby boom years and now facilitated by birth control and abortion, has settled in at below-replacement levels. While the possibility always exists that childbearing pattern might change, there is no current evidence to suggest movement away from this low and homogeneous fertility.

The historical trajectory of the black family: Ethnic differences in leaving home over the twentieth century

This article examines the historical trajectory of the Black family by documenting changes in leaving home among race and ethnic groups in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. The analysis uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households, a retrospective study of 13,008 US adults interviewed in 1987/88 about their past and current family experiences. A competing risks, proportional hazards statistical analysis allows an evaluation of the changing probabilities of leaving home by a given route (e.g., marriage, school, military). The article contrasts the effects of being Black, Hispanic, or non-Hispanic White on leaving home, distinguishing patterns early in the twentieth century (World War II or earlier) from those current during two periods later in the century (the baby boom years, Vietnam and after). There were major racial changes in ages at leaving home and in the routes taken out of the home. Trend data show convergences between White nonHispanics and Hispanics but divergences for Blacks. Black Americans participated far less than Whites in the decline in age at leaving home, primarily because of delays in leaving home for marriage and to obtain work.