In an interesting article Mark Easton discusses the mystery of the Golden Cohort - British people born between the years 1925 and 1934 who have experienced unprecedented & unfollowed improvements in health & longevity.
The latest edition of Population Trends from the Office for National Statistics contains an article based on an analysis of the 1% Longitudinal Study which attempts to untangle the reasons for this but is unable to come to any very definite conclusion. The authors conclude that “there is some element of social change and experience that assisted the generations born around 1930 to show slightly greater improvements than preceding or successive generations” & suggests that future researchers may wish to look, for example, at changes in population composition.
The Thirties of course saw the so-called ‘Parents strike’, when family planning began to be respectable & more readily available & when the fall in birth rates became an increasing focus of policy concern, which in turn led to the passing of the 1938 Population Statistics Act & the appointment of the Royal Commission on Population, which finally managed to report in 1948. Eugenecists were concerned about the lack of population growth particularly among the educated classes, but on the plus side were smaller families.
The point is illustrated by my own family history. All four of my grandparents, born as the C19th moved into the C20th, came from very large families (average about 10 children), but produced only 6 of their own in total.
And how many of this golden generation were cherished only children?
Many households were still able to employ some kind of paid household help, though living-in servants were becoming a rarity; the number & type of labour saving devices was multiplying, these of course made possible by the rapid spread of household electricity – the National Grid & the Central Electricity Generating Board were both established by an Act of 1926 – which must have done much to improve the health & hygiene of these golden children.
This generation may also be the first which was born to grandparents & parents who were virtually 100% educated at least to elementary level & literate, able to have access to plenty of information in newspapers & magazines on nutrition & childcare. The then new BBC national radio service probably played its part in this.
It was also the great era of suburban expansion, providing homes with gardens & healthier environments.
Although we tend to remember the 1930s as the time of the Great Depression many people did well out of the increasing opportunities for education & office jobs with the greater availability of Grammar School scholarships. It was also just a kinder era in many ways, with the beginning of unemployment pay & welfare (despite the dreaded means test). After the conscription of WWI everybody knew that all classes/families had suffered. Now that income inequality is rising again, it would be of particular interest to look at what happened to equality as these children were growing up.
One might also wonder about the contribution to child care that was made by the army of spinsters – whether informally, as maiden aunts, or formally by growing numbers of women employed in teaching, nursing & other caring professions.
The only blip in the story of the golden generation is the bump in mortality which is attributed to the smoking epidemic, but it is worth remembering that the 1930s were marked by lower consumption of alcohol per head, which could mean that the parents of these children had more income to spare on feeding & clothing them.
