Seizing chances to move ahead, more than 8 million "vets" took advantage of the "52–20" provision of the GI Bill of Rights, which provided $20 per week for up to fifty-two weeks of unemployment (or earnings of less than $100 a month). A form of affirmative action (a phrase of later years), the GI Bill cost $3.7 billion between 1945 and 1949.10 Other veterans, including thousands who had married hastily while on wartime leave, could not adjust to married life. The divorce rate in 1945 shot up to double that of the prewar years, to 31 divorces for every 100 marriages—or 502,000 in all. Although
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