A New Baby Boom: America's Next Economic Miracle?

Few periods in American history were as prosperous as the two decades after World War II. But the roaring 1950s and 1960s are only obvious in hindsight. When the war ended in 1945, the common view among economists was that, stripped of war-time stimulus and brimming with debt, the economy would slip back into the Great Depression. In 1947, the Council of Economic Advisors warned President Truman of "a full-scale depression some time in next one to four years."