Baby boom riots
Stuart Bonar has written an interesting blog posting on Liberal Democrat Voice about the English riots and the birth rate:
The first postwar [birth] peak was in 1947 (881,026 births), which was exactly 21 years before the 1968 riots. The next peak was in 1964, with 875,972 births; this was exactly 21 years before the 1985 riots.
Unmentioned by Willetts, of course, are the riots of 2011. Well, the third postwar peak in births (lower than the other two at 706,140, but still a peak with a trough either side) occurred in 1990. Yes, that’s right: 21 years ago this year.
So, each post-war peak in births has been followed, exactly 21 years later, by violent rioting in the capital. Willetts makes the argument, put simply, that when you get a big bulge of youngsters coming through, you get trouble…
Of course not everything can be explained in this way, but I found it interesting nonetheless. I wonder whether similar correlations hold for other countries.