1. USA & the Wider World 1945-
1989
• The American Way of Life

2. Affluence
• WW2 brought full employment
•Wages were high –
• 1940 - $754
• 1944 - $1,289
•After WW2 incomes continued to rise -
• 1950 - $3,319
• 1968 - $8,000
•‘the economy of abundance’

3. Immigration
• With the baby boom – immigration
contributed to the dramatic rise in
population
• WW2 Refugees
• 17,000 Korean war brides and their
children
• Immigrants from Eastern Europe
• 275,000 Mexicans became US
citizens – farm labourers in
California, Arizona and Texas

4. • From rural to urban areas
• The middle classes moved from the
cities to the suburbs
• Black Americans moved from the
South to the North (and west)
Migration

5. • 1940 – 130 million
• 1955 – 165 million
• 1960 – 179 million
• 1989 – 250 million
Population

6. The New Rich
• The ‘old rich’ retained and expanded their
wealth
• The Rockefellers
• The Vanderbilts
• By 1960 – 100,000 millionaires
• The ‘new rich’ made their money from oil,
financial services and property
• 1988 – 1.3 million millionaires

7. The Consumer Society
• Vast increase in range of goods
• Between 1945-1950
– 20 million fridges
– 5.5 million cookers
– 21.4 million cars
• By end 1950s – 225,000 dishwashers per
year
• By 1960 half of American homes had a
TV
• Advertising

8. The Car Culture
• Mass movement to suburbs
• Poor public transport
• 1945 – 26 million cars
• 1975 – 130 million cars
• The country was changed to facilitate car
ownership – motorways, car parks, drive-
ins, drive through’s etc
• Important for image and status
• Petrol was cheap.

9. The Cadillac

10. Buy Now, Pay Later
• Instalment buying – hire purchase
• Retailers offered consumers attractive
conditions with low interest rates
• General Motors ‘buy now, pay later’
• Banks and department stores began issuing
credit cards
• During 1950s – private debt went from $105
billion to $263 billion
• By 1970s over 600 million credit cards for
150 million adult Americans

11. Little Boxes
• Malvina Reynolds
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

12. • Presentation prepared by:
• Dominic Haugh
• St. Particks Comprehensive School
• Shannon
• Co. Clare
• Presentation can be used for educational purposes only – all rights remain with author