Couples married younger and families grew larger. By the early sixteenth century, populations were still below pre-Plague figures, but in the remainder of the century a population revolution of staggering proportions was underway. In one of the best documented principalities of Germany the increase in population between 1500 and 1604 was 84 percent. Other areas appear to have had even greater increases. Detailed studies of parish registers in England suggest a similar drastic trend.
French figures are the same.
All over Europe along upward wave had begun, which was not to subside until the middle of the seventeenth century. It would rise again in the eighteenth century. Why the baby boom should have started nobody quite knows, nor is it known why it stopped suddenly after our period. That is, population growth encourages commercial growth but renders social problems more urgent and pressing. Maintenance of tillage, control of the poor, punishment of vagabonds, trading, manufacturing, and wage regulation become a matter of grave concern to governments.