well hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now we've been going through unit eight of the ap us history curriculum and in this video we're going to talk about the economy after 1945 and patterns of migration so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked then let's get to it so by the end of this video we'll have considered the answers to two learning objectives first explain the causes of economic growth in the years after world war ii and second explain the causes and effects of the migration of various groups of americans after 1945. if you can already taste that sauce then baby let's get our learning off so the last couple of videos have been kind of bleak what with the cold war going on in the fear of communists infiltrating our society but in the years after world war ii it wasn't all communist hunting there was some good news too for example the economy in the 1950s was to put it in technical terms noise there were a lot of causes for that including increased productivity which is really just a holdover from the massive spike in productivity during the war and massive federal spending on infrastructure most notably the interstate highway system and this economic environment was even better for veterans of the war thanks to the servicemen's readjustment act of 1944 also known as the gi bill the world war ii veterans were given the opportunity to go to college on big daddy government's dime and take out low interest loans to buy houses and start businesses now within this economic boom americans were making babies like mad in fact between 1945 and 1960 over 50 million people were added to the u.s population in a phenomenon that became known as the baby boom with all these new families growing that led to an increased demand for housing construction and most of that construction occurred in the form of suburbs now the widespread possibility of suburban living was created with the advent of the automobile just a couple of decades into the 20th century and as cities began to construct more and more roadways more and more of the middle class decided that they wanted to use those cars to live outside the city and just commute in for work and mainly this was a white middle class phenomenon and once the white folks left the cities for their suburbs what was often left behind was minorities and the impoverished during the 1950s the trend of suburbanization exploded and one of the most significant milestones in the suburbanization of america was levittown which was a suburban community conceived and built by william j levin he ended up purchasing large tracts of land right outside several major cities and built metric butt loads of mass-produced low-cost homes organized and sprawling identical lots the original levitt town was built in new york and despite criticism from some folks who said that suburban living was monotonous and homogenizing these mass-produced homes provided a low-cost solution to the housing demand and many people flocked to them and they could do this more easily thanks to the interstate highway act which was passed in 1956. this created fast-moving highways that gave people the occasion to travel quickly from suburbs to urban areas and they very much did that now not only were many folks moving from the cities to suburbs during this time but there was also a kind of mass migration to the sun belt states in the south and the west part of this movement had to do with northern people being tired of but cold winters in the north but maybe more significant was the newly minted highway system that made interstate migration far easier many of the folks who made this move to the sun belt were gis and their families who came seeking opportunities in the defense industry and this move had a massive economic effect since we're right smack in the middle of the cold war and the arms race they're unto appertaining tax dollars devoted to defense spending shifted to the sun belt states and created the occasion for the shift of political power from the northeast and the midwest to the south and the west okay that's what you need to know about unit 8 topic 4 of the ap u.s history curriculum click right here in the review packet which will help you get an a in your class and a 5 on your exam in may and if this video was helpful and you want me to keep making them then the way that you let me know that is by subscribing heimler out