TheDebtLady.com: How Babies Got Americans Out of Debt
Who doesn’t want a history lesson? Below is an excerpt from my new book that states that the baby boomer generation helped the recession by making future consumers. There is more history in my book about consumers and credit cards.
The concept of stuff making you happy can be traced back almost a hundred years. There was a time when Americans pretty much had nothing, and interestingly enough, that time was called a “depression,” the Great Depression to be exact. The severe worldwide economic depression that affected all Americans started around 1929 and lasted until the late ‘30s or early ‘40s. It’s said that the start of the Great Depression was due, in part, to the devastating collapse of U.S. stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. It was the longest, most extensive, and deepest depression of the 20th century. It spread from the U.S. to almost every country in the world. Did you know that? I thought not. You already learned something, carry on…
Unemployment in the U.S. quickly soared to 25 percent, and in some countries rose as high as 33 percent. Countries all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry such as the United States. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming suffered as crop prices fell.
The Great Depression brought bread lines, soup kitchens, food rations, and thousands of hungry families. Still, people did what they could to make their lives happy. Cinema with sound was still new, board games were popular and people gathered around radios to listen to baseball games and short stories. Young people danced to the big band sounds of Sammy Kaye and Guy Lombardo.
Shortages continued throughout World War II, but as men went off to war, women went to work in the factories to help supply aircraft, ships, food, and medicine. The war fueled technological advances, and new jobs were created to meet the demand. When World War II finally ended in 1945, soldiers returned home and the United States began focusing on producing merchandise and agriculture, instead of war material. There was a big jump in the American family income, in quality of life, and improvements in what people were able to obtain in general.
According to History.com, almost exactly nine months after World War II ended, “the cry of the baby was heard across the land,” as historian Landon Jones later described. More babies were born in 1946 than ever before: 3.4 million, 20 percent more than in 1945. This was the beginning of the so-called “Baby Boom.”
Steve Gillon, who wrote Boomer Nation, stated,
“Baby Boom may have been obvious to everyone by 1958, but it caught most Americans by surprise when it started at the end of World War II. In 1946 the census’s experts viewed the upsurge in births as temporary and predicted an increase of only 5 million for the rest of the decade. How wrong they were! In 1948 the nation’s mothers gave birth to 4 million babies—a child was born every 8 seconds. By the end of the decade nearly 9 million babies had been born. The census planners had miscalculated by over 50 percent.”
He goes on to describe how in 1958 Life Magazine called children the “Built-in Recession Cure,” concluding that all babies were potential consumers who spearheaded “a brand new market for food, clothing and shelter.”
The Debt Lady Says, “Don’t be a government statistic, be an independent life force!”
Jerri Simpson, known as “The Debt Lady” (http://www.thedebtlady.com/), has worked in the finance industry for over 31 years, helping others conquer their financial troubles (http://thedebtlady.com/blog/testimonials/) and is well-known for her blogs.
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