Dimensions: 6'' x 9'' 300 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: January 2001 Paperback ISBN: 0844741388 Price: $ 20 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

November 2001
The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000
 By Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg

The First Measured Century is a comprehensive overview of twentieth-century America. A unique feature of the book is its presentation of key trends through more than two hundred charts with explanatory text. A companion reference volume to a PBS documentary of the same name, The First Measured Century examines one hundred years of data on diverse aspects of American life, including population, work, education, family, living arrangements, religion, active leisure, health, money, politics, government, crime, transportation, business, and communications.

Theodore Caplow is the Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Louis Hicks is an associate professor of sociology at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Ben J. Wattenberg is a senior fellow at AEI.

Population

Powered by massive immigration, a midcentury "baby boom," and a dramatic increase in life expectancy, the American population nearly quadrupled from 76 million in 1900 to 275 million in 2000.

A huge wave of immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe between 1900 and 1924. Another great surge of immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world arrived between 1965 and 2000. A baby boom that lasted from 1946 to 1964 added 76 million babies to the population. Life expectancy at birth increased by twenty-six years for white males and twenty-nine years for white females.

This increase in life expectancy tilted the age structure of the population toward older ages. In 1900, people aged sixty and over constituted 6 percent of the population. By 2000, their share of the population had nearly tripled to 17 percent. At the same time, the proportion of the population under age twenty declined from 44 percent in 1900 to 28 percent in 2000.

The population shifted from the Northeast and Midwest to the West, which increased its share of the population from 5 percent to 22 percent. The South's share of the population remained basically unchanged. Americans also moved from rural areas, where 60 percent of the population lived in 1900, to the cities, and then to the suburbs, where 52 percent of Americans resided in 2000.

Work

The bulk of the male labor force had shifted from primary occupations such as farming and fishing to secondary occupations such as factory work by 1950. By 2000, 58 percent of the male labor force had shifted to tertiary occupations such as professional, managerial, and service work.

Workplaces became dramatically safer. The amount of time Americans spent working declined dramatically. The workday declined from ten hours to eight hours. The six-day workweek became a five-day workweek. Americans entered the labor force at older ages because of increased formal schooling. They left the labor force at earlier ages because of retirement. Among men aged sixty-five and over, 63 percent worked in 1900 but only 17 percent worked in 2000.

Women worked much less at home and much more in the paid labor force. The proportion of women in "Middletown" (Muncie, Indiana) who reported doing four or more hours of housework every day fell from 87 percent in 1924 to 14 percent in 1999. The proportion of married women in the paid labor force rose from 6 percent in 1900 to 61 percent in 1998.

Education

The educational attainment of the American population rose spectacularly during the century. In 1910, only 13 percent of adults were high school graduates and only 3 percent were college graduates. By 1998, the comparable percentages were 83 and 24, respectively. Women predominated among high school graduates throughout the century. Their share of college degrees was only one in five in 1900 but rose to a majority by the end of the century. The diffusion of college education occurred even while college tuition increased sharply (see chart above). An even wider diffusion occurred in graduate education: In 1900, only 1,965 graduate degrees were awarded in the entire country; in 1999, more than half a million graduate degrees were conferred.

Family

The median age at first marriage for men fell from twenty-six years in 1900 to twenty-three years during the baby boom and then climbed to twenty-seven years in 1996. For women, the median age at first marriage fell from twenty-two years in 1900 to twenty years by 1960, and then increased markedly to twenty-five years by 1996. Premarital sex was rare in 1900, but by the end of the century, most women had sex before marriage (see chart above). Likewise, cohabitation was a practical impossibility in 1900. By 2000, cohabitation before marriage was the normal pattern. The divorce rate climbed steadily from four per thousand married women in 1900 to about twenty-three per thousand married women in 1980. But then the divorce rate declined to twenty per thousand in 1996. (It is not true that half of all marriages will likely end in divorce; if present trends continue, about four of ten marriages contracted in 2000 will end in divorce.)

In 1900, the average woman bore almost four children in her lifetime. By the time of the Great Depression, this "total fertility rate" had fallen to about two children. It rose during the baby boom years (1946@ 1964) to almost four children. Fertility plummeted below "replacement level" (2.1 children) in 1972 and remained there for the remainder of the century. The circumstances of birth changed markedly during the century. In 1917, 1 percent of births to white women and 12 percent of births to black women were out of wedlock. These numbers edged upward slightly until the 1960s, when they began to rise rapidly. By 1997, 26 percent of births to white women and 69 percent of births to black women were out of wedlock.

Living Arrangements

In 1900, the average American lived in a household of about six people in a dwelling that resembled a two-car garage divided into four rooms, with a wood stove for heat. The typical dwelling had no electricity, no flush toilet, no central heating, no refrigeration, no washing machine, and no air conditioning. By 2000, the average American was living in a three-bedroom house with all of these amenities, sharing them with only three other people.

In 1900, there were only eight thousand cars in the United States. By 1929, it was possible for the entire population to be seated in privately owned cars. By 2000, there were about as many motor vehicles as there were adults. Cars became much safer: The traffic death rate per mile fell 90 percent between 1925 and 1997. Residential mobility declined: One in five Americans changed addresses in 1948, but only one in six did so in 1999.

Religion

Americans' membership in religious organizations increased from 41 percent in 1900 to 70 percent in 2000 (see chart above). But weekly church attendance remained almost level (43 percent in 1939 and 40 percent in 1999). And the percentage of Americans who said they believe in God (more than 95 percent) remained quite stable from 1940 to 2000. However, the mix of religions changed between 1900 and 1998. The Catholic proportion of the population increased from 13 percent to 23 percent. Eastern Orthodox, Latter-day Saints, Islam, and Judaism all registered large increases. Evangelical Protestant denominations also grew significantly during this period, while mainline Protestant denominations declined.

Active Leisure

Leisure activities of all kinds increased enormously because of longer lives, less work, greater mobility, and a higher standard of living. The annual number of visitors to Yellowstone National Park rose from 13,727 in 1904 to more than 3 million in 1998 (see chart above). In 1919, only 152,000 Americans traveled overseas. In 1997, 22 million Americans went abroad.

Health

The health of Americans improved sharply due to cleaner water, safer and more nutritious food, central heating, vaccines, and improved medical treatments. Infant mortality fell 96 percent during the century. Deaths from infectious diseases declined, but those from degenerative diseases increased. Accidental deaths in the home and workplace declined throughout the century (see chart above). The suicide rate was about 1 per 100,000 people per year for most of the century, with higher rates during times of high unemployment in the first half of the century.

Alcohol consumption declined during Prohibition (1919-1933), then rose until the 1980s, when a modest decline ensued. Cigarette smoking was very rare in 1900, but by 1955, 59 percent of men and 31 percent of women smoked. As the health effects of cigarettes became known, these percentages declined, reaching 28 and 22 percent, respectively, by 1997. Illegal drug use soared in the 1960s and 1970s, then declined in the 1980s, and rose again in the 1990s. By 2000, more than 30 million adults had used marijuana at some point in their lives.

Like higher education spending, health care expenditures rose sharply from $290 per capita in 1929 to $4,243 per capita in 1997. But the hospitalization rate of the population was almost the same in 1997 as in 1930 (about one in five hundred). The number of disabled persons rose fortyfold from 1949 to 1997.

Money

Average real earnings rose very rapidly from 1900 to 1975. After 1975, real earnings stagnated, but total compensation continued to increase. Women's earnings converged toward men's earnings, and the earnings of blacks converged toward those of whites.

The average income of middle-income households rose from $15,745 in 1929 to $47,809 in 1998. As their incomes rose, households spent a smaller fraction of it on food and clothing and larger shares on medical care, transportation, and discretionary purchases. The share spent on housing and household operation remained unchanged. As incomes rose, philanthropic donations also soared. Individuals gave about $10 billion annually to worthy causes in 1929, a figure that rose to more than $120 billion by the end of the century. Giving by foundations, corporations, and estates also increased more than tenfold.

The poverty rate, as defined by the government, declined from 22 percent in 1959 to 12 percent in 1999. The largest decline during this forty-year period occurred among blacks, whose poverty rate fell from 55 percent to 24 percent. Because of continuing high immigration from Latin America, the Hispanic poverty rate of 23 percent in 1999 was the same as in 1972.

Politics

Contrary to widespread belief, voter participation fluctuated during the century without any clear trend: It was high in 1952 and 1960, but low in 1920, 1924, 1948, and 1996. The party balance in the U.S. Congress alternated between Democrats and Republicans, with Democrats in the majority for more than half of the century. The number of women in Congress rose from zero in 1900 to sixty-five in 1999. The number of black elected officials in America rose from an estimated fifty in 1900 to almost nine thousand in 1998.

Government

Federal government spending increased from 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1900 to 19 percent of GDP in 1999. Federal expenditures peaked during World War II, reaching 44 percent of GDP by the end of the war. While federal government expenditures rose sixfold during the century, the number of federal employees increased from 1 percent to 2 percent of the civilian labor force. Most of the increase in federal spending was not for employees, but for enormous entitlement programs. By 2000, these programs (Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and dozens more) reached most of the population. State and local government spending rose from 5 percent to 18 percent of GDP. A large part of this increase was related to the mass diffusion of education, which is financed primarily by state and local governments.

The U.S. armed forces were very small in 1900: 126,000 active duty personnel, virtually all of them white men. In World Wars I and II, the military swelled quickly and then shrank rapidly. But after midcentury, the United States maintained a large military force during peacetime. By 1999, the black proportion of armed forces personnel was roughly equal to the black share of the population. Fourteen percent of military personnel were women in 1999.

Crime

The homicide rate was very low in 1900 (1.2 per 100,000 population). An eightfold surge in murders led to a peak in 1933. Then the homicide rate fell sharply until the mid-1960s, when it began to climb just as sharply to nearly 10 per 100,000 population by the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, the homicide rate suddenly began to decline, falling to 5.8 per 100,000 population in 1999. The robbery rate also rose from a very low level (39 per 100,000 population in 1957) to highs exceeding 250 per 100,000 population during the 1980s and early 1990s. Then the robbery rate began to decline, however, falling to 152 per 100,000 population by 1999.

Like expenditures for health care and higher education, spending on police protection rose sharply from $13 per capita in 1900 to $207 per capita in 1996. The incarceration rate fluctuated until 1980, when it suddenly tripled from 139 prisoners per 100,000 population to 462 prisoners per 100,000 population in 1999. Contrary to conventional thinking, the juvenile share of arrests for property crimes declined after 1968, and the juvenile share of arrests for violent crimes declined after 1978.

Transportation

Airlines and private automobiles replaced railroads as the principal means of intercity travel. But railroads carried the bulk of the nation's freight tonnage throughout the century. After 1950, trucks delivered most of the finished goods. Total miles traveled by all motor vehicles increased by a factor of 25,000 from 1900 to 1997.

Business

American economic output per person grew eightfold from 1900 to 2000. From 1900 to 1950, the business cycle included very sharp expansions and equally sharp recessions. After 1950, the economy became much more moderate, with long periods of steady growth and short, relatively minor recessions. American business revenues grew from $2 trillion in 1939 to $18 trillion in 1996. Stock exchange volume rose by a factor of more than 3,000 between 1900 and 1999. The proportion of Americans owning stocks rose from 1 percent in 1900 to 52 percent in 1998.

The American economy was internationalized during the twentieth century. Imports and exports of goods per capita rose tenfold. Imports and exports of services rose fourfold from 1960 to 1999. Contrary to widespread belief, American investment overseas grew more than foreign investment in the United States during the twentieth century. From 1900 to 1999, the value of foreign investment in the United States rose 35-fold, while the value of American investment abroad increased more than 140-fold.

Communications

Contrary to conventional wisdom, books may have been a bigger part of American cultural life at the end of the century than ever before. Sixty-five thousand new book titles were published in 1997--more than ten times the number of new titles published in 1900. Americans bought more than 2 billion books in 1997. Only a quarter of these books were mass-market paperbacks. This increase in book purchases can be traced, at least in part, to the massive increase in education throughout the population. Newspaper circulation, on the other hand, peaked around 1950 and then declined inexorably under intense competition from television.

The use of other means of communication increased sharply during the century. The annual volume of mail per person increased from 147 pieces in 1900 to 1,103 pieces in 1998. The average number of telephone calls per person increased from 38 in 1900 to 2,325 in 1997. By the end of the century, 76 million Americans were cellular telephone subscribers, and 42 percent of the nation's households had personal computers.

Note: All dollar figures are constant 1999 dollars.