Posted on 04/24/2024 10:32:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The 1960s were some of the most significant years in American history. The decade saw the Civil Rights Movement and a rising counterculture that reimagined the shape of the American social fabric. Pop music exploded like never before with the British Invasion led by the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but the ’60s were also an intense era of war and political violence.
The decade’s most monumental moments tend to be widely covered, and the sheer number of historic events during this time almost create the impression that every moment was imbued with turbulence. But while the tumult of the decade played out on the evening news in homes across America, many people were still living normal everyday lives — albeit lives that looked quite different from our modern lifestyle. The following numbers offer a snapshot of day-to-day life in 1960s America.
Smoking was still widespread in the middle of the 20th century. The smoking rate in the U.S. reached a peak of 47% of adults (including 50% of doctors!) by the end of 1952. Though cigarette sales declined somewhat in 1953 and 1954 amid growing health concerns, the introduction of the filtered cigarette created a rebound. Through the early years of the 1960s, the smoking rate held steady at 42% of adults. On January 11, 1964, Surgeon General Luther L. Terry published the first report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, a landmark event that brought the link between smoking and disease front and center in the American consciousness. Smoking has been on an overall downward trend ever since: As of 2021, smoking has declined to 11.5% of adults.
In 1966, the national average for the price of a men’s haircut was $1.95 ($19.03 in today’s currency). For women, it was $2.16 ($20.79 today) — unless an extravagant “permanent wave” was desired, which cost an average of $12.15 ($118.57 today). The permanent wave (or “perm”) was a multi-step process to make long-lasting curls, which required additional materials and could take between six to eight hours to complete, hence the premium cost. Chicago was the most expensive city for men to get a haircut in; the average price there was $2.48 ($24.20 today), while Dallas was the least expensive at $1.79 ($17.47 today). But interestingly, Chicago was the cheapest city for women’s haircuts — $2.08 ($20.30 today) for a conventional cut, and $11.27 ($109.98) for the permanent wave. The most expensive city for women was Washington, D.C., at $3.31 and $18.19 ($32.30 and $177.51, respectively).
At the beginning of the 1960s, marriage was still a fairly unquestioned rite of passage into adulthood. The median age for brides in 1960 was 20.1, while the median age for grooms was 24.2, and the percentage of adults who were married was a large majority: 72% in 1960. But the decade brought about sweeping social changes in attitudes toward divorce, sexuality, and parenthood, creating a downward trend in marriage that persisted into the 21st century. Data collected in 2023 shows that the current median age at first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men, and 53% of American adults are married.
A single dollar bill had a lot of buying power throughout most of the 20th century. The national average price for most grocery staples in the ’60s was less than a buck: A 5-pound bag of flour was 61 cents; a dozen eggs cost 66 cents; a pound of ground beef (which was broadly referred to as “hamburger” even when not formed into a patty) was 55 cents; and a box of generic corn flakes was 32 cents. In today’s dollars, these prices equate to $5.95, $6.44, $5.37, and $3.12, respectively. With the notable exception of eggs (which have infamously inflated in cost since 2020), these equivalent prices are right in line with what we’d expect to see at a grocery store today.
Though many aspects of daily life are more expensive today than they were in the past, phone service is one item that’s actually more affordable today than it was in the 1960s. During most of the landline era, phone calls to different regions incurred long-distance charges, based on the duration and distance of the call. In 1960, the cost for a three-minute call from New York to San Francisco was $2.25; it dropped to $1.75 by the end of 1967. With inflation, the $2 average for that three-minute call would be the equivalent of $19.89 today. A lengthier conversation could easily incur enough long-distance charges to surpass the cost of an entire month of cellphone service today.
For most of the 20th century, the typewriter was the quintessential office item. In 1946, leading manufacturer IBM set out to improve the typewriter design that had been standard since the late 19th century. IBM engineer Horace “Bud” Beattie developed a mushroom-shaped type element to replace the basket of individual typebars that manual typewriters were equipped with; it solved the problem of typebars jamming if keys were pressed in too rapid succession. Beattie and a team of engineers refined the “mushroom printer” to a spherical shape about the size of a golf ball, which allowed for a pivoting motion that made the page more stable and less prone to small shifts that could result in unwanted slanted text.
In 1954, the team at IBM developed a prototype of the new design. The type sphere was designed to be easily replaceable, allowing for switching out typefaces, thus giving the machine its name: Selectric. The Selectric was capable of printing 186 words per minute and accommodating keystrokes as quick as 20 milliseconds apart with no risk of jamming. It included ergonomic keys, and was available in eight color combinations. It took seven years from the completion of the prototype for the product to go to market, but when the Selectric went on sale on July 31, 1961, the buzz around it was instant. First-year sales hit 80,000, topping projections by 400%. For the rest of the decade and beyond, it became the new standard in offices, comprising 75% of all typewriters sold, and eventually a 94% market share for electric typewriters.
Divorce one’s husband and ka-ching you’ve hit the jackpot!
How are you fixed for ribbon? In the early ‘80s, the lab I worked in used a mylar(?) ribbon in our Selectric. Use once only, and the struck letters were clearly visible on the ribbon. Ribbon had to be secured when not in use, and disposed of “properly” when used up.
Some more stats that make you understand how badly our country has been destroyed....
Church membership was 70% in 1992. It is now 46%.
The percentage of families that needed 2 full time workers was 30% in 1970. It is now 60%.
The percentage of children living in 2 parent households was 85% in 1970. It is now 65%.
The rate of “severe obesity” was 10% in 1970. It is now 20%.
The suicide rate was 10 per 100k in 1992. It is now 17 per 100k.
2 dollars for a phone call. That’s pretty pricy. I’ll take todays phone thank you.
Preach it Brother!
(I smoke) ;)
You got that right. The 21st Century is a beautiful thing.
I knew several age mates who went into the Peace Corps. They came back radicalized and anti-American.
Age of Aquarius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjxSCAalsBE
In 1962 the Supreme Court threw God out of public life. A year later our President was murdered, riots began in 64, the first widespread drug use started, endless war, crime began to rise, families began to break down, schools started their downward spiral, record inflation, scandels, on and on. Yes, there is a strong correlation to the actions of the Supreme Court and what happened to society afterwards.
I think that was largely its purpose, to create a sort of left’s form of military academy.
Every time I hear someone suggest a national service program that isn’t military I know what it will be, a program to organize and put them under leadership that will indoctrinate the kids and shape them ideologically and who will identify and connect with the more talented ones to steer them into careers of influence, while at the least influencing the lifelong politics and ideals of the rest.
Having lived through the ‘60s, I understand the significance of JFK’s election, but was not the number one cause of the decade, but rather an effect. Demographics was the prime cause of the ‘60s. The huge Boomer generation was coming of age at the same time older people were anxious to move on from the age of Eisenhower and the greatest generation. I actually met Kennedy at a campaign rally he held at Montgomery Blair H.S. A little more than two years later, I was standing outside of the Bethesda Naval Hospital watching his body arrive in a grey ambulance.
The 60s was the decade of the generation before the boomers.
In 1960 the oldest boomer was 14.
If Eisenhower’s veep, the 1960 version of Nixon, had won the election most of the 60s would not have happened and the left would not have had so much raw meat to work with and then the follow up mass 3rd world replacement immigration to keep it going.
No Vietnam, no 1960s era dominated by Vietnam and draft resistance, no Kennedy assassinations, no unionizing of government employees, NO 1965 IMMIGRATION ACT that led to the end of America, no creating of the myth of the JFK Camelot fantasy built into the American Psyche as something that existed and then was killed by the non-liberal ugliness of the American people.
No Watergate, no Bay of Pigs fiasco, a possible President Reagan in 1968 without any Bush dynasty being created, no LBJ, no Goldwater debacle, no creation of Ted Kennedy the Senatorial Giant, no mass transformation of so many institutions such as the left solidifying control over the universities, no war against the mental hospitals, probably no affirmative action Executive Order and so much more.
Bookmark.
Long distance. Expensive back then.
Pay phones were a dime.
yep, it is a fallacy to think everyone had long hair and was a hippie in the 60’s.
Most people still looked like what you think people looked like in the 50’s during the 60’s
I can tell you this: The old coots the press used to run to back then to get their uncool old coot opinion on the latest boomer burning, sit in, riot or perversity were one hundred percent correct in where they said it would all lead…RIGHT HERE WHERE WE ARE NOW.
“”””Pay phones were a dime.””””
Except for Louisiana where they were a nickel, I don’t know why.
“”””yep, it is a fallacy to think everyone had long hair and was a hippie in the 60’s.
Most people still looked like what you think people looked like in the 50’s during the 60’s””””
People don’t realize that the under 30s voted 52% for Nixon in 1972 and were the age group that most supported the Vietnam War.
Great times civility was in season beautiful cars............
Between 1880 and 1960 the inflation rate was 100%. That is 80 years for prices to double.
Between 1960 and 2024 the inflation rate was over 955%, in only 64 years.
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