The 30s would be in the upswing after the Great Depression, which hit the entire world hard, and right in the middle of WWII. Post WWII was incredibly hard on almost every European country, as well. The founder of IKEA was inspired during the reconstruction period by Swedish socialists and a simple idea: that everybody deserves to be able to afford furniture. Before IKEA, the Swedish were largely using hand-me-downs of generational pieces or improvising wooden shipping boxes into tables and chairs. True furniture was generally custom pieces made for the wealthy by artisans. IKEA is still banned to this day from buying materials (like lumber) from a number of Swedish companies because they were black marked for providing affordable furniture to the masses by outsourcing the assembly labor to the customer with their innovative flat pack design. Much of Europe in the Cold War was massive concrete prefab buildings because the need to build large-scale housing quickly was so dire. Many cities were practically levelled by the air raids.
On another note, I think a lot of the conversation on the topic of birth rates ignores or under-values the impact of sex ed, safe sex, and the rise of accessible home entertainment. Teenage pregnancies dropping has had a major impact on the birth rate, as has the reduction in accidental pregnancy. Combined, they probably make up a lion’s share of the difference between the present and a century ago. There’s a reason that so many people are born in the summer/fall, and it’s because 9 months before - in the winter - people are cooped up inside more and have less options for things to do for fun, which leads to more “Netflix and chill” and more accidental pregnancies as a result.
The 30s would be in the upswing after the Great Depression, which hit the entire world hard, and right in the middle of WWII. Post WWII was incredibly hard on almost every European country, as well. The founder of IKEA was inspired during the reconstruction period by Swedish socialists and a simple idea: that everybody deserves to be able to afford furniture. Before IKEA, the Swedish were largely using hand-me-downs of generational pieces or improvising wooden shipping boxes into tables and chairs. True furniture was generally custom pieces made for the wealthy by artisans. IKEA is still banned to this day from buying materials (like lumber) from a number of Swedish companies because they were black marked for providing affordable furniture to the masses by outsourcing the assembly labor to the customer with their innovative flat pack design. Much of Europe in the Cold War was massive concrete prefab buildings because the need to build large-scale housing quickly was so dire. Many cities were practically levelled by the air raids.
On another note, I think a lot of the conversation on the topic of birth rates ignores or under-values the impact of sex ed, safe sex, and the rise of accessible home entertainment. Teenage pregnancies dropping has had a major impact on the birth rate, as has the reduction in accidental pregnancy. Combined, they probably make up a lion’s share of the difference between the present and a century ago. There’s a reason that so many people are born in the summer/fall, and it’s because 9 months before - in the winter - people are cooped up inside more and have less options for things to do for fun, which leads to more “Netflix and chill” and more accidental pregnancies as a result.