A critical disjuncture? The culmination of post-World War II socio-demographic and economic trends in the United States

This essay examines the consequences of major social, demographic and economic trends in the United States since World War II. These include rising women’s employment, the ‘Baby Boom’, the outlines of the so-called ‘new’ immigration, the increasing racial and ethnic diversity deriving from that immigration, the economic contexts in which recent US immigration has occurred, and recent technologically-induced features of global work flows that will condition immigration’s future reception and effects. Women’s wartime work experiences, together with their economic opportunities in the ensuing decades, boosted married women’s autonomy and domestic leverage. Rising economic prosperity encouraged marriage and family formation even as growing employment among married women of childbearing age made having and taking care of large families more difficult. World War II also spawned the expansion of migration to the United States, which in turn converted the country from a largely biracial society with a sizable white majority and a small black minority into a multiracial, multiethnic society with greater racial and ethnic boundary crossing and increasingly blurred colour lines. A major issue is whether currently changing economic conditions and social institutions will support and strengthen such tendencies or instead weaken them. Without robust job growth, the demographic legacy of the baby boom, which now involves ever-rising numbers of retired people, will be more difficult to support, especially given the country’s current fiscal deficits. Greater earnings inequality and weak job growth may also poison the climate for further immigration to the US, thus diminishing the chance that newcomers can continue contributing to the dissolution of fault lines among racial-ethnic groups and to the resolution of periodic labour shortages.