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Postwar Economic Growth
Once World War II ended, the United States found itself being the only major industrialized nation in the world that emerged relatively unharmed. After a decade of economic depression and war, the American economy was back in full force due to the war effort. This meant that factories that had been building bombers in bulk once again turned to making automobiles; factories that produced munitions now pumped out refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and other modern conveniences—the industry was ready to take on the unmet consumer needs of society. The American economy exploded (in a good way) in the decades that followed the war.
The G.I. Bill and Baby Boom
Sixteen million Americans had served during the war, and the return to normal civilian life was eased by government support. To help soldiers settle back into civilian life, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, or G.I. Bill for short) provided money for college tuition, vocational school, starting a business, and home loans with no down payment. In a short time, millions of former military personnel were starting new lives. Soon after, the postwar Baby Boom began. With the Depression and war behind them and a soaring economy, millions of Americans felt it was the right time to settle down and start a nuclear family—Dad, Mom, and two kids. The Baby Boomers, people born in the postwar period, were the largest generational cohort in American history until they were overtaken by “Millennials,” almost 40 years later.
Internal Migrations
With readily-available home loans and growing families, Americans flocked to the new suburbs and the promise of inexpensive single-family homes. Housing developments, such as those in Levittown, New York, became the model of mass-produced suburban living and pulled many middle class Americans from urban centers. In time, the construction of the interstate highway system through the Federal-Aid Highway Act created modern, multilane roads connecting cities to suburbs and states to their neighbors. As businesses started to move from cities to suburbs and to less expensive parts of the country, so too did American workers, migrating to the Sun Belt states of Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and others.
Conformity vs. the Beatniks
As a response to the chaos of the decades that had preceded the 1950s, postwar Americans sought to keep their lives as normal as possible. New mass media technologies like radio and television, broad-based economic prosperity, and cookie-cutter homes in the suburbs all helped create a new culture of conformity: a desire for a like-minded sameness that spread through many Americans’ lives. However, within a few years, the growth of a “counterculture,” the Beat Movement (“Beatniks,” for short), began. Beatniks swam against a current of conformist ideas that emphasized patriotism, hard work, and the pursuit of economic success. They emphasized freethinking, artistic expression, and “expanding consciousness” through drugs, music, or Eastern mysticism.
