Reasons For Suburban Growth In Post World War II America

Some of the main reasons for suburban growth in post-World War II America was due to the Second Great Migration of African Americans to the West and the North, the GI Bill, and the baby boom. At the end of World War II the African Americans continued to leave the rural and racism of the South for the opportunities that were continuing to develop in the West and the North. The GI Bill, VA loans, and newly enacted FHA loans, allowed families affordable housing and to have more children. This new housing, combined with the return of the soldiers from World War II, were some of the reasons for the dramatic increase in the birth rate that became known as the baby boom and resulted in the increased suburban growth in post-World War II America.
The G.I. Bill, gave new chances for veterans to easily adjust from service of the war and return to civilian life. The GI Bill included requirements that addressed housing and employment for veterans returning from active duty. The bill provided provisions that provided guaranteed government, low interest loans to veterans for the purchase of single family homes. With access to cheap loans, the returning veterans and their growing families chose to move away from the urban areas, housing shortages, and declining living conditions, by moving into the new and affordable growing suburbs. The combination of new government funding, made possible through the G.I. Bill, allowed for the education of the returning soldiers, successful reentry into the workforce, and ability to afford new housing. These were the conditions that led to the new and continuing growth of the American
The new and increasing suburbs were only reachable by having an automobile and were accessible to their places of work by the developing network of roads. In 1956 the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, and President Eisenhower, began a public works act that began the largest public works program in American history. It designated billions of dollars for road construction, and created access from the cities and urban areas to the suburbs. Tract housing, first developed by William Levitt, also expanded the American suburbs by quickly using large areas of outlying farmland to construct simple but comfortable and affordable housing to the newly affluent American middle class after World War II. The government supported the expanding suburbs with the new VA and FHA loans. While this provided a relief for the housing shortage for white middle class Americans, it also deepened the divide and segregation that was extended by the exclusion of many black Americans to the new suburban