The U.S. Cold War economic policies were in contrast to those the United States pursued to win World War II. To win the Cold War, the United States became a low-savings, high-consumption economy. It basically supported its allies in a recovery, development and growth process that out-consumed the USSR and China.

How did the Cold War Affect life in the 1950’s? The Cold War affected life in the 1950’s because everyday everyone was frightened of not knowing if a nuclear war would start or not, fears of communist infiltration made 1950’s time of contrast, the United States needed someone who made them fell safe.

The Cold War established the presence of an American eternal enemy, and politicians capitalized on this as a way to consolidate their own sense of power and control. The Cold War gave American politics and culture a clear and definable enemy that everyone could agree on.

The “paranoid style,” which the scholar Richard Hofstadter defined as a recurrent feature of American politics culminating during the Cold War, also affected the cultural production of the era. The repression of political dissent in the early 1950s, known as McCarthyism, affected popular culture.

TV also helped make professional and college sports big businesses, and sometimes provided excellent comedy and dramatic shows to vast audiences that might not otherwise have had access to them. But even to its mildest critics, much of what was on the often-aptly nicknamed “boob tube” was mindless junk.

Back in the ’50s, women most commonly held positions as secretaries, bank tellers or clerical workers, sales clerks, private household workers and teachers. And in 2010? The top five jobs include secretary holding out at No. 1, then cashier, elementary and middle school teacher, nurse and nursing aide.

In fact, the divorce rate was 2.5 divorces for every 1,000 people in 1950, and dropped to 2.3 in 1955. In 1958, the rate even slumped to 2.1, with 368,000 divorces.

Growing up in the 1950s meant spending a ton of time outside riding bikes, playing sports, climbing trees, and sometimes getting into a bit of trouble. You don’t quite understand how kids can spend so much time indoors on their electronic devices without getting a hankering to be outdoors.

The average American family in 2020 consisted of 3.15 persons….Average number of people per family in the United States from 1960 to 2020.