Affluence and Conformity

Influence of WW2

• Wealth had doubled between 1941-45.

• By 1945, total value of goods and services supplied by the USA and its income from foreign

investment (GNP) was $211 billion ($99.7 billion in 1940).

• By 1947, the USA was producing 57% of the world9s steel, 43% of its electricity and 62% of its oil.
• Global economic power and by 1945 the USA had full employment; America maintained its

dominance after the war.

• Became the worlds first consumer society.

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Age of Affluence?

• GNP $503.7 billion by 1960.
• Wages rose and consumer credit, indicator of personal buying power, rose from $8.4 billion in 1950

to $45 billion in 1960.

• Differences between white and non-white Americans.
• 1953, median income of a white family was $4,392 per year compared to $2,461 for non-white

families.

• 1960, median income of a white family was $5,835 per year compared to $3,233 for non-white

families.

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Changing Nature of Cities

• Population rose from 130 million (1940) to 165 million (1955).

• People moving from rural areas to urban areas; 96.5 million (1950) to 124.7 million (1960).

• Many wanted better standard of living; black Americans wanted to escape rural poverty and racial

discrimination in the Old South; 12 largest cities gained 1.8 million non-white residents.

• 1960s, cities becoming racially segregated; Watts in LA, South Bronx and Harlem in New York were

becoming black American areas; white Americans moved to suburbs.

• Interracial tension developing in cities as settlement patterns changed.

• Federal Housing Administration (FHA) supported anti-Jewish and anti-black restriction covenants

(list of conditions attached to the sale of a house) on new suburban developments.

• FHA9s aim was to ensure neighbourhoods had racial cohesion.
• Non-white residents barred from suburban developments; forced to live in privately owned rental

accommodation in inner city areas, which became rundown ghettos.

• 1949-59, only 320,000 houses were funded under President Truman9s Public Housing Act in the

cities; even when housing was provided, it was often cramped (the Projects).

• To save cost, the projects were built as high rise blocks; poor public facilities and dense population

became a feature of inner cities.

• Northern, eastern and western cities were developing into two societies: non-white inner city and

white suburbia.

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Expansion of the Suburbs

• 1950s, many white residents left city centres to non-whites and moved to the suburbs.
• Aided by developments such as Levittowns, purpose-built new communities of affordable private

housing for whites only.

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