Postwar suburbanization (1 gen 1940 anni – 31 dic 1979 anni)

Descrizione:

the affluent society:A 1958 book by John Kenneth Galbraith that analyzed the nation’s successful middle class and argued that the poor were only an “afterthought” in the minds of economists and politicians.

the other america:A 1962 book by left-wing social critic Michael Harrington, chronicling the persistence of poverty in the United States, what he called the nation’s “economic underworld.”


America’s annual GDP jumped from $213 billion in 1945 to more than $500 billion in 1960; by 1970, it exceeded $1 trillion (Figure 25.1). This sustained economic growth helped produce a 25 percent rise in real income for ordinary Americans between World War II and the 1960s. Even better, the new prosperity was not accompanied by inflation. After a burst of high prices in the immediate postwar period, inflation slowed to 2 to 3 percent annually, and it stayed low until the escalation of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s. Feeling secure about the future, newly well-off Americans were eager to spend. In 1940, 43 percent of American families owned their homes; by 1960, 62 percent did. Over the same period, income inequality dropped sharply. The share of total income going to the richest tenth of the population declined by nearly one-third from the 45 percent it had been in 1940. Americans on average were both richer and more equal. The prosperity enjoyed by ordinary Americans stood in sharp contrast to the conditions of life in much of the rest of the world, where overall wealth grew slowly and was concentrated in the hands of a small elite in most countries

After a sharp dip during the Great Depression, the GDP rose steadily in both real and constant dollars in the postwar period.

The defining development of the postwar boom was the dramatic expansion of domestic consumer markets. An avalanche of consumer goods, both in quantity and variety, awaited Americans when they went shopping. In some respects, the postwar decades echoed the 1920s: new gadgets, time-saving appliances, a car craze, and new mass media that shaped American tastes. Yet the consumerism of the 1950s bore a new significance: consumption took on an association with citizenship. Buying things, once a sign of personal indulgence, now signaled full participation in American society and, moreover, fulfilled social responsibility. To purchase a new home or car, or to buy the latest refrigerator for the kitchen or toys for the children, signaled one’s social belonging — advertisers, in particular, were keen to emphasize that buying a product meant joining one’s neighbors not rising above them. The appetites of a suburban family, asserted Henry Luce’s Life magazine, helped to ensure “full employment and improved living standards for the rest of the nation.”


Increased levels of education, growing home ownership, and higher wages created what one historian has called a “consumers’ republic.” But what did its citizens buy? The postwar emphasis on nuclear families and suburbs provides the answer. In the emerging suburban nation, three elements came together to create patterns of consumption that would endure for decades: houses, cars, and children. A feature in a 1949 issue of McCall’s, a magazine targeting middle-class women, illustrates the connections. “I now have three working centers,” a housewife explains. “The baby center, a baking center and a cleaning center.” Accompanying illustrations reveal the interior of a brand-new house, stocked with the latest consumer products: accessories for the baby’s room; a new set of kitchen appliances; and a washer and dryer, along with cleaning products and other household goods. The article does not mention automobiles, but the photo of the house’s exterior fills in the missing info: father drives home from work in a new car.

Consumption for the home, which included automobiles, drove the postwar American economy as much as, or more than, the military-industrial complex. Between 1945 and 1970, more than twenty-five million new houses were built in the United States. Each required its own supply of new appliances and gadgets, from refrigerators to lawn mowers. In 1955 alone, Americans purchased four million new refrigerators, and between 1940 and 1951 the sale of power mowers rose from thirty-five thousand per year to more than one million. Moreover, as American industry discovered “planned obsolescence” — the encouragement of consumers to replace appliances and cars every few years — the home became a breeding ground for consumer wishes.

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