This same line of reasoning could help explain why fertility dropped sharply in the .1970s even though real hourly earnings were 35 percent higher than in the 1950s, Earnings were high in an absolute sense, but many young people who grew up and formed their expectations in the 1950s and 1960s perceived economic conditions in the 1970s as unsatisfactory, The unemployment rate averaged 6,2 percent of the labor force during the seventies, compared with 4.8 percent in the sixties and 4.5 percent in the fifties. The deterioration in the rate of growth of real hourly earnings was even more striking. During the 1950s this basic indicator of earning power grew at 2,4 percent per annum. In the 1960s the rate of increase was 1.8 percent per annum, but during the 1970 real hourly earnings rose a scant 0.2 percent per annum. Not only did the overall economic situation worsen, but employ
ment and earnings prospects were particularly poor for young men and women — the very ones who had grown up during two of the most prosperous decades in our country’s history. The failure of the 1970s to meet the rising tide of expectations undoubtedly contributed to the increase in the age of marriage and the low fertility rate in that decade.