Post-war Prosperity, Consumerism and the American Dream
From Wartime Workshop to Consumer Society
In 1945 the United States emerged from war as the only major combatant economy that had not been bombed. American factories had built the weapons of victory; in 1946 they began turning out cars, washing machines, televisions and houses for a population that had been waiting through fifteen years of depression and wartime rationing. By 1960, US gross national product had roughly doubled in real terms compared with 1945, and Americans — about 6% of the world’s population — consumed roughly a third of its goods and services. Sociologists called this the ‘American Dream’. Whose dream it actually was — and who paid for it — defines the politics of the next twenty years.
By 1960 US GNP had roughly doubled compared with 1945. Americans were 6% of the world population but consumed around a third of all goods and services. The post-war boom rested on cheap oil, mass car ownership, federal housing finance and the spending power of the GI Bill.
The GI Bill and the Suburbs
The cornerstone of post-war prosperity for white American families was the GI Bill — the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. It gave returning veterans low-interest home loans with no down payment, federal money to attend college or vocational training, and a year of unemployment pay. Around 7.8 million veterans took up educational benefits and around 4.3 million bought homes with GI loans. The federal government effectively underwrote the creation of a mass middle class.
Suburbs grew faster than any other kind of community. William Levitt mass-produced houses on a Long Island potato field in 1947 using assembly-line construction. At peak a finished Levittown house came off the line every 16 minutes, and one sold for $7,990 with no down payment for veterans — about half the cost of a comparable urban apartment. By 1951 Levittown had over 17,000 houses and 70,000 residents. Imitators built suburbs across the country. Between 1948 and 1958 around 13 million new homes were built; by 1960 around a third of all Americans lived in suburbs.
William Levitt’s sales contracts originally banned sale or rental to anyone ‘other than members of the Caucasian race’. The Federal Housing Administration, which underwrote the mortgages, drew ‘redlines’ around mixed-race neighbourhoods and refused to insure loans inside them. The result was that the federal subsidies that built suburban affluence were systematically denied to black families. While Levittown housed 70,000 white residents in 1953, not one was African-American. The post-war boom was racially structured from the foundations up — a fact that would shape the geography of American inequality for decades.
Cars, Highways and the Consumer Boom
Suburbs only worked because of cars. Car registrations rose from around 26 million in 1945 to around 60 million by 1960. Petrol cost roughly 25 cents a gallon. The Interstate Highways Act of 1956, signed by President Eisenhower, committed federal money to build 41,000 miles of motorway connecting major cities — partly justified as a Cold War civil-defence measure. Drive-in cinemas, drive-in restaurants and shopping malls (the first regional shopping mall opened at Northgate, Seattle, in 1950) followed the new highways out of the cities.
Consumer credit fuelled the boom. The Diners Club credit card (1950) and BankAmericard (later Visa, 1958) made it easy to buy now and pay later. Hire-purchase schemes spread to washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and televisions. By 1960 around 90% of American households had a television. Advertising spending roughly tripled between 1945 and 1960. Consumer goods became the visible measure of success in a society that no longer had a depression to remember and no major war to fight.
Television, Rock and Roll and Teenage Culture
Television became the cultural common ground. By 1960 the average American household watched around five hours a day. Family sitcoms (Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best) projected an image of suburban prosperity built around stay-at-home mothers and breadwinner fathers. Westerns and quiz shows dominated prime time. The 1955 Disneyland park in California was a physical version of the same television world — a clean, controlled fantasy of American prosperity.
For young people, the boom produced the modern teenager. Around 13 million Americans were aged 13–19 by 1956, with disposable incomes their parents had never known. The fusion of black rhythm and blues with white country music produced rock and roll: Bill Haley and his Comets’ ‘Rock Around the Clock’ (1954), Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (1956), Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. Television shows like American Bandstand brought rock and roll into living rooms. Cinema followed: James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) gave a face to teenage rebellion. Many parents called this the corruption of American youth; teenagers called it freedom.
The 1950s boom was uneven. Around 22% of Americans still lived in poverty in 1960, including most rural African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans on reservations, and elderly Americans without Social Security from agricultural or domestic work. Inner-city neighbourhoods, drained of resources by suburban flight, decayed. Female employment rose to around 19 million by 1960 but largely in low-paid clerical and service work; the breadwinner ideal pushed against women combining careers with motherhood. Critics like John Kenneth Galbraith (The Affluent Society, 1958) and Michael Harrington (The Other America, 1962) argued that the dream had ignored a third of the country — a critique that shaped the policies of the next decade.
A Postcard Society
Post-war America presented itself in postcards: the lawn, the station wagon, the kitchen full of new appliances, the children at a newly built suburban school. Most of those postcards were honest about the families they pictured. They were not honest about the families they did not picture — black families in segregated neighbourhoods, Mexican-American farm labourers, elderly Americans on inadequate pensions, urban poor, dissenting students. The American Dream had genuinely lifted tens of millions into the middle class. It had also defined ‘American’ in narrow terms that would generate the political movements of the 1960s. The 1950s prosperity is the launchpad for civil rights, feminism, and the Great Society.
Levittown houses sold for $7,990 with no down payment for veterans. By 1960 around a third of Americans lived in suburbs and 90% of homes had a TV. But around 22% lived in poverty, redlining excluded black families from suburbs, and women were pushed back into domestic roles after wartime work.