What was a key economic transformation of the 1950s

The period from to also witnessed a significant increase in the paid leisure time of working people. The hour workweek established by the Fair Labor Standards Act in covered industries became the actual schedule in most workplaces by The majority of workers also enjoyed paid vacations and industries catering to leisure activities blossomed.

American family watching TV in , photo by Evert F. Baumgardner for National Archives and Records Administration. Images of prosperous white middle-class families in their suburban homes symbolized the popular narrative of economic stability and traditional family values.

Educational outlays were also greater than in other countries while a higher proportion of young people were graduating from high schools and universities than elsewhere in the world, as hundreds of new colleges and universities opened every year. At the advanced level, U. In regard to social welfare, the postwar era saw a considerable improvement in insurance for workers and their dependents against the risks of illness, as private insurance programs like Blue Cross and Blue Shield expanded.

With the notable exception of farm and domestic workers, virtually all members of the labor force were covered by Social Security. In , about two-thirds of factory workers and three-fourths of office workers were provided with supplemental private pension plans.

Many city dwellers gave up cramped urban apartments for a suburban lifestyle centered on children and housewives, with the male breadwinner commuting to work. The growth of suburbs was not only a result of postwar prosperity, but innovations of the single-family housing market with low interest rates on and year mortgages, and low down payments, especially for veterans.

Meanwhile, the suburban population swelled because of the baby boom; a dramatic increase in fertility in the period of — The role of women in U. As women had been forced out of the labor market by men returning from the military service, many chafed at the social expectations of being an idle stay-at-home housewife who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and tended to the children.

Marriage rates rose sharply in the s and reached all-time highs. Americans began to marry at a younger age and marriage immediately after high school was becoming commonplace. Women were increasingly under tremendous pressure to marry by the age of The stereotype developed that women were going to college to earn their M. In , live births in the United States surged from , in January to , in October.

By the end of the s, about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the s. Annual births first topped four million in and did not drop below that figure until , by which time four out of ten Americans were under age Many factors contributed to the baby boom. In the post-war years, couples that could not afford families during the Great Depression made up for lost time.

The mood was now optimistic. Unemployment ended and the economy greatly expanded. Millions of veterans returned home and were forced to reintegrate into society. To facilitate the integration process, Congress passed the G. Bill of Rights, which encouraged home ownership and investment in higher education through the distribution of loans to veterans at low or zero interest rates. The G. Bill enabled record numbers of people to finish high school and attend college.

This led to an increase in stock of skills and yielded higher incomes to families. The post-World War II prosperity did not extend to everyone. Many Americans continued to live in poverty throughout the s, especially older people and African Americans, the latter of whom continued to earn far less on average than their white counterparts.

Immediately after the war, 12 million returning veterans were in need of work, and in many cases could not find it. In addition, labor strikes rocked the nation, in some cases exacerbated by racial tensions due to African Americans having taken jobs during the war and now being faced with irate returning veterans who demanded that they step aside.

The huge number of women employed in the workforce in the war were also rapidly cleared out to make room for men. Racial differences were staggering. Voting rights discrimination remained widespread in the south through the s. Although both parties pledged progress in , the only major development before was integration of the military.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. For much of the 20 th Century, the Soviet Union rivaled the United States in political, military and economic strength. While the central command economy of the Soviet Union was diametrically opposed to the market liberalism of Western nations, the rapid economic development that the Soviets posted in the middle decades of the century made their system appear to be a viable economic alternative.

But after growth tapered off and various reforms were instituted to revive the stagnating economy, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed, along with its promise of an alternative to Western capitalism. Where centralized economic planning helped spur its mid-century growth, the Soviet Union's piecemeal reforms to decentralize economic power ultimately undermined its economy.

The year saw the Russian czar overthrown by groups of revolutionaries including the Bolsheviks, who fought and won a subsequent civil war to create a socialist state within the borders of the former Russian empire. Starting in , with Joseph Stalin's rise to power, a command economy characterized by totalitarian control over political, social, and economic life would define the Soviet Union for most of the remaining 20 th Century.

The Soviet command economy coordinated economic activity through the issuance of directives, by setting social and economic targets, and by instituting regulations. Soviet leaders decided on the state's overarching social and economic goals.

In order to achieve these goals, Communist Party officials assumed control over all of the country's social and economic activities. The Communist Party legitimized its control by claiming it had the knowledge to direct a society that would rival and overtake any Western market economy. Officials managed the significant amounts of information necessary for centralizing the planning of both production and distribution.

Hierarchical structures were instituted at all levels of economic activity, with superiors having absolute control over the norms and parameters of planning assignments, as well as setting regular performance evaluations and rewards. At first, the Soviet Union experienced rapid economic growth. While the lack of open markets providing price signals and incentives to direct economic activity led to waste and economic inefficiencies, the Soviet economy posted an estimated average annual growth rate in gross national product GNP of 5.

There was a dip to a 2. The impressive performance was largely due to the fact that, as an underdeveloped economy, the Soviet Union could adopt Western technology while forcibly mobilizing resources to implement and utilize such technology. An intense focus on industrialization and urbanization at the expense of personal consumption gave the Soviet Union a period of rapid modernization. However, once the country began to catch up with the West, its ability to borrow ever-newer technologies, and the productivity effects that came with it, soon diminished.

The Soviet economy became increasingly complex just as it began running out of development models to imitate. With average GNP growth slowing to an annual 3. The Soviets had been aware since the s of such long-term problems as command economy inefficiencies and how adopting the knowledge and technology of developed economies could come at the expense of fostering an innovative domestic economy. Piecemeal reforms like those of the Sovnarkhoz implemented by Nikita Khrushchev in the late s attempted to begin decentralizing economic control, allowing for a "second economy" to deal with the increasing complexity of economic affairs.

But with economic growth declining and inefficiencies becoming increasingly more apparent, partial reforms to allow for more decentralized market interactions were reintroduced in the early s.

The quandary for Soviet leadership was to create a more liberal market system in a society whose core foundations were characterized by centralized control. These early reforms failed to revive the increasingly stagnant Soviet economy, with productivity growth falling below zero by the early s.

This ongoing poor economic performance led to a more radical set of reforms under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. While attempting to maintain socialist ideals and central control over primary societal goals, Gorbachev aimed to decentralize economic activity and open the economy up to foreign trade.

This restructuring, referred to as perestroika , encouraged individual private incentives, creating greater openness. Perestroika was in direct opposition to the previously hierarchical nature of the command economy. But having greater access to information helped foster critiques of Soviet control, not just of the economy, but also of social life. When the Soviet leadership relaxed control in order to save the faltering economic system, they helped create conditions that would lead to the country's dissolution.

While perestroika initially appeared to be a success, as Soviet firms took advantage of new freedoms and new investment opportunities, optimism soon faded. A severe economic contraction characterized the late s and early s, which would be the last years of the Soviet Union.

Soviet leaders no longer had the power to intervene amidst the growing economic chaos. Newly-empowered local leaders demanded greater autonomy from central authority, shaking the foundations of the command economy, while more localized cultural identities and priorities took precedence over national concerns.

With its economy and political unity in tatters, the Soviet Union collapsed in late , fragmenting into fifteen separate states. The early strength of the Soviet command economy was its ability to rapidly mobilize resources and direct them in productive activities that emulated those of advanced economies. Yet by adopting existing technologies rather than developing their own, the Soviet Union failed to foster the type of environment that leads to further technological innovation.

After experiencing a catch-up period with attendant high growth rates, the command economy began to stagnate in the s. Rather than saving the economy, various piecemeal reforms instead only undermined the economy's core institutions. Accessed Oct. Department of State. Library of Congress. British Library. International Markets. Your Privacy Rights.