Explain the causes and consequences of TWO of the following population movements in the United States during the period 1945–1985.
-Suburbanization
-The growth of the Sun Belt
-Immigration to the United States
Suburbanization CAUSES:
• 1944: Service Men’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill) included provisions for below-market home loans
to veterans (Veterans Administration [VA] loans).
• Need for housing due to soldiers returning from World War II.
• Federal Housing Administration (FHA) from 1934 extended government role by insuring mortgage
loans.
• Demographic trends: marriage rates, childbirth rates, declining age of marriage, decline in divorce
rate; nuclear family.
• Migration facilitated by new construction, loans and indirect government stimulus.
• Construction boom on cheaper land outside of cities; led by William Levitt with Levittown (1,500
acres with 17,000 mass-produced, low-priced homes on Long Island, New York, and in New
Jersey).
o Levittowns were segregated.
o In 1960 federal housing laws made it illegal to engage in segregation of tract homes
purchased with VA or FHA loans.
o Race riots in the 1960s accelerated white exodus from the cities.
o Between 1950 and 1960, 18 million migrated from cities to suburbs.
• Popular culture: Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, LIFE magazine.
• Housing Acts, 1949 (“urban renewal”), 1954.
• Army Corps of Engineers/Bureau of Reclamation dams and irrigation projects in arid West.
• 1954: white flight/desegregation following Brown vs. Board of Education.
• Federal Highway Act of 1956 boosted suburban growth (Interstate Highway System).
• 1965: Department of Housing and Urban Development created.
• Other cold war stimulus included transferring government-built defense plants to private
corporations and establishing strategic bomber and missile bases throughout the country.
• Houston, Texas, Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Greater Los Angeles area became centers for the
Space Race (aerospace industry).
CONSEQUENCES:
• FHA policies led to discrimination against racially and economically mixed communities.
• Within a generation, the majority of middle-class Americans had moved to the suburbs.
• Businesses, schools and stores followed, leaving a lower tax base in the cities:
o Many older and inner cities became increasingly poor due to a lower tax base.
• Many older and inner cities became racially divided due to “white flight”: movement of whites to
the suburbs.
• Federal Highway Act of 1956 accelerated the decline of mass transit in older cities.
• Suburbs necessitated a car culture with drive-in theaters and fast-food restaurants.
• Civil rights movement: Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides.
• Bomb shelters.
• “Gentrification.”
• Decline of mass-transit systems.
• Post–World War II social conformity:
o Domestic ideal of nuclear family.
o Rebirth of religious life.
o Belief in the group focus on middle-class aspirations such as safety, low taxes, patriotism.
• Heightened mobility: the average American moved six times before reaching age 25.
• John Birch Society called for conservative and Protestant values and advocated segregation of “un-
American” residents.
• “Redlining.”
• Race-based real estate covenants.
• Architectural and psychological conformity.
• Critics: The Lonely Crowd (1950), The Organization Man (1956) and The Crack in the Picture
Window (1956).
• Urban renewal destruction of minority neighborhoods.
• Teens with cars reduced parental control.
• Suburban middle-class lifestyle bred a teen-oriented culture.
• All in the Family explored the bigoted side of the suburban family.
• The Cosby Show extolled the middle-class accomplishments of African American families.
• By 1985 over half of Americans owned their residences.
• Attractions included shopping malls, parks, new schools and other new infrastructure.
Growth of the Sun Belt
(Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California)
CAUSES:
• World War II economic activity relocated laborers and military personnel, stimulating the poor
South and underpopulated West Coast.
• Defense-related spending (during World War II and the cold war) moved to Sun Belt regions — oil,
military and aerospace.
• World War II wartime construction in thinly populated areas close to the coast (South) and in areas
close to the Pacific war (West).
• Transportation costs drastically reduced in post-war period.
• Aging Baby Boomers, Social Security, Medicare.
• Warm winters and affordable air-conditioning due to electrical grid development.
• Inexpensive gas from Oklahoma and Texas and explosion in automobile sales.
• Expansion of tourism.
• Lower labor costs/Bracero Program.
• Increase in immigration from Mexico, Asia and Latin America.
• Fewer unions; lower southern wages; southern right-to-work laws — weak labor laws.
• High-tech industry in South and West: military and computer industries (National Aeronautical
and Space Administration [NASA] in Florida and Texas) are emblematic.
• Post–Civil Rights Act of 1964 characterized primarily by migration to the Sun Belt.
• Lower taxes.
• Lower costs in the South (for utilities, housing, etc.).
• Cheaper cost of land.
• Sun Belt regions are attractive places to live.
• Increase in infrastructure spending.
• Northern states in the Rust Belt went through a deep economic depression in 1974-75.
• The decline of the Rust Belt undercut prosperity in the nation as a whole.
• Rust Belt workers fled to the Sun Belt for jobs, straining social services and infrastructure.
• Northern cities’ treasuries were depleted.
Consequences:
• Increase in personal income, population and housing in the Sun Belt.
• Rise of Rust Belt identity and population decline in the Northeast.
• 1970s: Nevada, California, Florida and Arizona were fastest growing states; 2000: 10 percent of the
U.S. population lived in California.
• Shift in congressional representation toward California, Florida, Texas.
• More ethnic diversity in California and the West.
• Political balance shifts South along with population and wealth; realigns political power in the U.S.
• Decline in federal aid to big cities since late 1970s.
• Nationally, a shift to more conservative social policies.
• Housing market expanded — prices of housing stock increased.
• Sun Belt economy transformed from agriculture into industry, yet agriculture remains important in
some areas.
• Rise in recreational and retirement spending.
Immigration to the United States
Causes:
• Lifting of restrictive policies prior to World War II.
• War refugees from Europe (World War II), Korean and Vietnam Wars.
• Political refugees from Communist takeovers in Cuba and Southeast Asia.
• Immigration Act of 1965 ended the ethnic quotas of the 1920s that favored Europeans.
• Rise in legal immigrants from Latin American and Asian countries.
• Post–World War II search for work/higher wages.
• 1942–1964: Bracero Program — agricultural program to bring Mexicans to the U.S.
• U.S. church groups and others gave support to immigrants coming to U.S.
• War Brides Act of 1945 — authorized the limited admission of the wives and children of citizens
honorably discharged or serving in U.S. armed forces.
• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran–Walter Immigration Act):
o Reaffirmed the national origins quota system.
o Abolished the ban on most Asian immigrants; people from all nations given the
opportunity to enter the U.S. (repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882).
o Barred homosexuals and people considered subversive from entering the U.S.
• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965:
o Abolished the national origins quota system.
o Allowed 120,000 immigrants from Western Hemisphere.
o Allowed 170,000 immigrants from Eastern Hemisphere.
o Established preferences for professionals and highly skilled workers.
• 1977 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished separate immigration quotas
for the Western and Eastern Hemispheres.
• Refugees Act of 1980 reduced the worldwide quota to 270,000 immigrants.
• Technological improvements in land and air travel decreased costs of travel.
Consequences:
• Shift in areas of origin:
o Prior to 1960s, the majority of immigrants were from Europe and Canada.
o By the 1980s, 47 percent of immigrants came from Latin America, 37 percent from Asia,
and less than 13 percent from Europe and Canada.
• Post–World War II immigrants have included more women and persons who are more educated
and who have higher skills.
• Increase in immigration each year since 1945.
• Immigrants accounted for 60 percent of the U.S. population growth according to the 1990 census.
• Two-thirds of immigrants settled in New York, California, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and Texas.
• Many Americans have become increasingly concerned about the number of immigrants coming to
the U.S.
• Increase of illegal immigrants from Latin America.
• Anti-immigration sentiment has intensified, especially with regard to Latinos.
• Some in the anti-immigration movement have supported efforts to make English the official
language.
• Interracial tensions have arisen between African Americans and Latinos.
• After 1965 developing nations replaced Europe as the major source of immigrants.
• Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Simpson–Rodino):
o Granted amnesty to illegal immigrants arriving before 1982.
o Penalized employers for hiring illegal immigrants.
• In 1989 Congress passed legislation authorizing work permits and granting refugee status to
Central Americans.
• Shifting patterns of immigration have produced a more multicultural society.
