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I’m arguing the depression end during the Eisenhower years.

People’s standard of living didn’t rise during the war. They went through all sorts of privations.

People who argue WWII ended the depression are arguing that war is an economic positive. Exactly the opposite is true. It is a gigantic sink.

There I can agree with you. However a depression is not defined by its effects on the privations of people but on the economic production of the country. HOW it effects the workers is social and the fact that the unemployment is economic. WWII resulted in the fact that our work force WAS employed, paid, and no longer in lines at soup kitchens. . . It matters NOT how the production of the nation was consumed, just that it was consumed, the workers were employed, and that employment gainful. My degree is in economics. By definition, the depression ended.

Could people enjoy the benefits of the nation's productivity? Not entirely. Some deprivations were enforced artificially. For example, the idiotic requirement to keep the yellow dye out of margarine, and not allowing bread to be sold pre-sliced as the slicing machines at bakeries lay idle by order of law.

Socially, and individually, you are probably correct, as the benefits of the infrastructure conversion began to be felt in the early fifties. Many workers were working to overcome the losses of the depression, buying, establishing businesses, going to school on the GI bill. The economy was booming, but conversion to peacetime footing took time. Figuring out HOW to use the capacity creativity. Six million workers (the returning soldiers) had to be absorbed into the work force. By 1955, I think everything was booming. So we are in agreement.