As is often the case after a major war, the end of World War II brought a Baby Boom to many countries, notably those in Europe , Asia , North America , and Australasia . There is some disagreement as to the precise beginning and ending dates of the post-war baby boom, but the range most commonly accepted is 1946 to 1964. In the United States alone, approximately 76 million babies were born between those years. In 1946, live births in the U.S. surged from 222,721 in January to 233,452 in May. In October, 339,499 babies were born. By the end of the 1940s, about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the lean 1930s. In 1954, annual births first topped four million and did not drop below that figure until 1965, when four out of ten Americans were under the age of twenty. Figures in Landon Y. Jones, "Swinging 60s?" in ''Smithsonian Magazine'', January 2006, pp 102–107.
In May, 1951, Sylvia F. Porter, a columnist in the New York Post, used the term "Boom" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in post war America. She said "Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a batch, bounce them all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom. The biggest, boomiest boom ever known in history." From "Babies Equal Boom, ''New York Post'', May 4, 1951. The term "Baby Boom" again came to the public's attention in 1960, with the publication of Landon Y. Jones' ''Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation''.
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