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American History

 

The Cold War

Students at a Brooklyn middle school have a 'duck and cover' practice drill in preparation for a nuclear attack; silver print, 1962. From the New...The Cold War is the underlying conflict that characterized relations between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of World War II (1939–45) until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved. This period of mistrust and hostility grew from the ideological differences between Soviet Communism and U.S. capitalist democracy. The two countries never declared war on each other during this time, but each participated in wars in other parts of the world—most notably in Korea, Vietnam, and Grenada, Afghanistan, and Angola—to spread its own ideals and to check the influence of the other. The abiding tension of the Cold War with the Soviet Union had a significant effect on the U.S. economy, dictating the allocation of the nation's resources and the scope of its defense budget. In the second half of the twentieth century, the U.S. defense budget soared owing to the various wars fought to contain the spread of Communism and to an arms race in which the rival superpowers stockpiled nuclear weapons to deter the other from direct military engagement. Ultimately, the Cold War ended because the United States militarily outspent the Soviet Union in the 1980s, breaking the Soviet economy but leaving the U.S. federal government trillions of dollars in debt. Read more ..
From CREDO Cold War in Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
Image: Duck And Cover Class Drill. Students at a Brooklyn middle school have a 'duck and cover' practice drill in preparation for a nuclear attack; silver print, 1962. From the New York World-Telegram archive. (Photo by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)
Postwar Prosperity, 1946–72
Women Assembly Line WorkersAfter World War II (1939–45), the U.S. economy entered an extended period of prosperity, a postwar boom that lasted from 1946 to 1973. Before the war the U.S. economy had experienced the severe economic downturn of the Great Depression (1929–39). Increased production to support the Allies after war broke out in 1939 boosted a recovery, which continued after the United States entered the war in December 1941. Before the war drew to a close, policymakers began taking measures to avoid a repetition of the brief period of economic stagnation that had followed World War I (1914–18), and in July 1944 delegates from the allied nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to establish a method for stabilizing the international economy. After the war, the United States established the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe, rather than burdening the losing nations with unmanageable reparations, as the Allies had after World War I. Domestically, U.S. consumers went on a buying spree, using their wartime savings to purchase products, such as refrigerators and automobiles, that had not been available during the war. The boom ended in the early 1970s owing to a number of factors, including changes in U.S. fiscal policy that undermined the Bretton Woods reforms and an oil embargo that was imposed on the United States by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In the waning years of the Great Depression the United States had developed a technological lead on the major European countries, but those countries closed the economic gap in the postwar period, and by the early 1970s they had caught up both economically and technologically.
The U.S. population surged after World War II as Americans, on average, began marrying at a younger age and having larger families. Between 1948 and 1955 the annual number of American births increased by 50 percent, the greatest such increase in the country's history. This “baby boom,” as the phenomenon was called, was a direct consequence of the prosperity of the period as jobs were plentiful, incomes were rising, and credit was easily available. Women made significant economic advances in the postwar period. During the war there had been an increase in the number of women in the workforce owing to vacancies created by the departure of men going into the service. Immediately after the war many women left their jobs as men returned, but in the 1950s the trend reversed again, and 33 percent of the women of working age had jobs by 1960. Most of these jobs were part-time and the pay was low. The female workers were often over 35 years of age, going to work after their children had entered school. During the 1950s and 1960s many families moved to the suburbs and went into debt to buy new homes and cars. Read more ..
From CREDO Postwar Prosperity, 1946–72 in Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
Image: Women Assembly Line Workers. Women on working on Plymouth Valiants on the assembly line at the Chrysler Jefferson plant, Detroit, Michigan, 1963. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)