• Great Depression Essays

The Great Depression Essay

The recession of the American economy led to the greatest depression that has never been experienced in the American economic history. The Great Depression, experienced between 1929 and 1932, was a period of extreme hardship in America as it forced Americans to experience an economic crisis which left many jobless and hopeless. It was the worst and longest difficult situation in the country’s economic history that threw many hardworking people into poverty. People lost their homes, farms as well as their businesses (Gunderson 4). The Great Depression led to economic stagnation and widespread unemployment and also the depression was experienced in virtually all in every major industrialized country (Hall and Ferguson 2). The impact of the Great Depression was devastating as many individuals lost their homes because they had no work and a steady income and as a result, most of them were forced to live in makeshift dwellings with poor condition and sanitation. Many children dropped out of school and married women were forced to carry a greater domestic burden. More so, the depression widened the gap between the rich and the poor (Freedman 14) because many poor individuals suffered the hardships during this period while the rich remained unaffected. This paper discusses the period of Great Depression and it covers the life during this time and how the city dwellers, farmers, children and minority groups were affected. The Great Depression started following the occurrence of the Wall Street crash and rapidly spread in different parts of the world; however, some have argued that it was triggered by mistakes in monetary policy and poor government policy (Evans 15). Different hardships and challenges were experience by individuals in different parts of the world with many people left with no work. More so, individuals especially farmers suffered from poverty and low profits, deflation and they had no opportunity for personal and economic growth. Notably, different people were affected differently, for instance, unemployment affected men and they were desperate for work while children were forced to leave school and search for something to do so as to earn money for their family. Farmers were greatly affected because this period led to decrease in price in the prices of their crops and livestock and they still worked hard to produce more so as to pay their debts, taxes and living expenses. The period before this economic crisis, farmers were already losing money due to industrialization in cities and so most of them were renting their land and machinery. When the depression started, prices on food produced by farmers deflated leaving them incapable of making profit and so they stopped selling their farm products and this in turn affected the city dwellers that were unable to produce their own food. Undoubtedly, after the stock market crash, many firms declined and many workers were forced out of their jobs because there were really no jobs. Moreover, many people had no money to purchase commodities and so the consumer demand for manufactured goods reduced significantly. Sadly, individuals had to learn to do without new clothing. The prices dropped significantly leaving farmers bankrupt and as a result most of them lost their farms. Some farmers were angry and desperate proposing that the government should intervene and ensure that farm families remain in their respective homes. But again, farmers were better off than city dwellers because they could produce much of their own food. Many farm families had large gardens with enough food crops and in some families, women made clothes from flour and feed sacks and generally, these farm families learned how to survive with what they have and little money.

Struggling with your HW?

Get your assignments done by real pros. Save your precious time and boost your marks with ease. Just fill in your HW requirements and you can count on us!

  • Customer data protection
  • 100% Plagiarism Free

Furthermore, the town and cities suffered too, for instance, as the factories were shutting down following the depression many industrial workers were left jobless. The life in the city was not easy as many individuals lived in overcrowded and unheated houses with poor sanitation. In addition, many firms closed and many individuals lost their jobs and had to deal with the reality of living in poverty. Town families were unable to produce their own food and so many city dwellers often went hungry during this period. During winter, they had hard times overcoming the cold because they had no money to buy coal to warm their houses. During the depression, the known role of women was homemaking because they had a difficult time finding jobs and so the only thing they were supposedly good at was preparing meals for their families and keeping their families together. Some women who managed to have jobs supported their families in overcoming this difficult time. Accordingly, many children were deprived their right to have access to quality education because many societies had to close down their schools due to lack of money. Some of them managed to be in schools but majority dropped out. More so, they suffered from malnutrition and those in rural areas were worse off because with the family’s low income, they were unable to purchase adequate nutritional food for all family members. Many children and even adults died from diseases and malnutrition (Gunderson 4). The minority groups in America especially the African American population who lived in rural areas working on the farms of white owners. Even though they lived in poverty, the Depression made the situation worse as their lived changed completely and remained extremely poor because the farmers they were working for had lost their land. All in all, many families struggled to leave on low incomes or no jobs with many children starving; lacked shelter and clothing as well as medical attention (Freedman 4).

In conclusion, the Great Depression was a tragic time in American history that left many people poor, unemployed or little pay, and children forced to work at a younger age. The Great Depression affected everyone from children to adults, farmers to city dwellers and so everyone’s lives changed drastically by the events experienced during this period. Many individuals were unemployed and remained desperate searching for better lives. In addition, children had no access to quality education as most of them left school and sadly they accompanied their mothers to look for work and search for a new life. However, some people particularly the employers and the wealthy were not affected during this period because they were protected from the depression with their position in the society.

Works Cited

Evans, Paul. “What Caused the Great Depression in the United States?” Managerial Finance 23.2 (1997): 15-24.

Used our essay samples for inspiration ?

For more help, tap into our pool of professional writers and get expert essay editing services!

Freedman, Russell. Children of the Great Depression. New York: Clarion Books, 2005. Print.

Gunderson, Cory G. The Great Depression. Edina, Minn: ABDO Pub, 2004. Internet resource.

Hall, Thomas E, and Ferguson J D. The Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Internet resource.

Related Essays

Find Free Essays

We provide you with original essay samples, perfect formatting and styling

Request must contain at least 2 characters

Popular Topics

Samples by Essay Type

Cite this page

About our services

Topic Great Depression

Level High School

This sample is NOT ORIGINAL. Get 100% unique essay written under your req

  • Only $11 per page
  • Free revisions included

Studyfy uses cookies to deliver the best experience possible. Read more.

Studyfy uses secured cookies. Read more.

Federal Reserve History logo

The Great Depression

A bread line at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York City, during the Great Depression

“Regarding the Great Depression, … we did it. We’re very sorry. … We won’t do it again.” —Ben Bernanke, November 8, 2002, in a speech given at “A Conference to Honor Milton Friedman … On the Occasion of His 90th Birthday.”

In 2002, Ben Bernanke , then a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, acknowledged publicly what economists have long believed. The Federal Reserve’s mistakes contributed to the “worst economic disaster in American history” (Bernanke 2002).

Bernanke, like other economic historians, characterized the Great Depression as a disaster because of its length, depth, and consequences. The Depression lasted a decade, beginning in 1929 and ending during World War II. Industrial production plummeted. Unemployment soared. Families suffered. Marriage rates fell. The contraction began in the United States and spread around the globe. The Depression was the longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy.

The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an end. A series of financial crises punctuated the contraction. These crises included a stock market crash in 1929 , a series of regional banking panics in 1930 and 1931 , and a series of national and international financial crises from 1931 through 1933 . The downturn hit bottom in March 1933, when the commercial banking system collapsed and President Roosevelt declared a national banking holiday . 1    Sweeping reforms of the financial system accompanied the economic recovery, which was interrupted by a double-dip recession in 1937 . Return to full output and employment occurred during the Second World War.

To understand Bernanke’s statement, one needs to know what he meant by “we,” “did it,” and “won’t do it again.”

By “we,” Bernanke meant the leaders of the Federal Reserve System. At the start of the Depression, the Federal Reserve’s decision-making structure was decentralized and often ineffective. Each district had a governor who set policies for his district, although some decisions required approval of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. The Board lacked the authority and tools to act on its own and struggled to coordinate policies across districts. The governors and the Board understood the need for coordination; frequently corresponded concerning important issues; and established procedures and programs, such as the Open Market Investment Committee, to institutionalize cooperation. When these efforts yielded consensus, monetary policy could be swift and effective. But when the governors disagreed, districts could and sometimes did pursue independent and occasionally contradictory courses of action.

The governors disagreed on many issues, because at the time and for decades thereafter, experts disagreed about the best course of action and even about the correct conceptual framework for determining optimal policy. Information about the economy became available with long and variable lags. Experts within the Federal Reserve, in the business community, and among policymakers in Washington, DC, had different perceptions of events and advocated different solutions to problems. Researchers debated these issues for decades. Consensus emerged gradually. The views in this essay reflect conclusions expressed in the writings of three recent chairmen, Paul Volcke r, Alan Greenspan , and Ben Bernanke .

By “did it,” Bernanke meant that the leaders of the Federal Reserve implemented policies that they thought were in the public interest. Unintentionally, some of their decisions hurt the economy. Other policies that would have helped were not adopted.

An example of the former is the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates in 1928 and 1929. The Fed did this in an attempt to limit speculation in securities markets. This action slowed economic activity in the United States. Because the international gold standard linked interest rates and monetary policies among participating nations, the Fed’s actions triggered recessions in nations around the globe. The Fed repeated this mistake when responding to the international financial crisis in the fall of 1931. This website explores these issues in greater depth in our entries on the stock market crash of 1929 and the financial crises of 1931 through 1933 .

An example of the latter is the Fed’s failure to act as a lender of last resort during the banking panics that began in the fall of 1930 and ended with the banking holiday in the winter of 1933. This website explores this issue in essays on the banking panics of 1930 to 1931 , the banking acts of 1932 , and the banking holiday of 1933 .

Men study the announcement of jobs at an employment agency during the Great Depression.

One reason that Congress created the Federal Reserve, of course, was to act as a lender of last resort. Why did the Federal Reserve fail in this fundamental task? The Federal Reserve’s leaders disagreed about the best response to banking crises. Some governors subscribed to a doctrine similar to Bagehot’s dictum, which says that during financial panics, central banks should loan funds to solvent financial institutions beset by runs. Other governors subscribed to a doctrine known as real bills. This doctrine indicated that central banks should supply more funds to commercial banks during economic expansions, when individuals and firms demanded additional credit to finance production and commerce, and less during economic contractions, when demand for credit contracted. The real bills doctrine did not definitively describe what to do during banking panics, but many of its adherents considered panics to be symptoms of contractions, when central bank lending should contract. A few governors subscribed to an extreme version of the real bills doctrine labeled “liquidationist.” This doctrine indicated that during financial panics, central banks should stand aside so that troubled financial institutions would fail. This pruning of weak institutions would accelerate the evolution of a healthier economic system. Herbert Hoover’s secretary of treasury, Andrew Mellon, who served on the Federal Reserve Board, advocated this approach. These intellectual tensions and the Federal Reserve’s ineffective decision-making structure made it difficult, and at times impossible, for the Fed’s leaders to take effective action.

Among leaders of the Federal Reserve, differences of opinion also existed about whether to help and how much assistance to extend to financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. Some leaders thought aid should only be extended to commercial banks that were members of the Federal Reserve System. Others thought member banks should receive assistance substantial enough to enable them to help their customers, including financial institutions that did not belong to the Federal Reserve, but the advisability and legality of this pass-through assistance was the subject of debate. Only a handful of leaders thought the Federal Reserve (or federal government) should directly aid commercial banks (or other financial institutions) that did not belong to the Federal Reserve. One advocate of widespread direct assistance was  Eugene Meyer , governor of the Federal Reserve Board, who was instrumental in the creation of the  Reconstruction Finance Corporation .

These differences of opinion contributed to the Federal Reserve’s most serious sin of omission: failure to stem the decline in the supply of money. From the fall of 1930 through the winter of 1933, the money supply fell by nearly 30 percent. The declining supply of funds reduced average prices by an equivalent amount. This deflation increased debt burdens; distorted economic decision-making; reduced consumption; increased unemployment; and forced banks, firms, and individuals into bankruptcy. The deflation stemmed from the collapse of the banking system, as explained in the essay on the  banking panics of 1930 and 1931 .

The Federal Reserve could have prevented deflation by preventing the collapse of the banking system or by counteracting the collapse with an expansion of the monetary base, but it failed to do so for several reasons. The economic collapse was unforeseen and unprecedented. Decision makers lacked effective mechanisms for determining what went wrong and lacked the authority to take actions sufficient to cure the economy. Some decision makers misinterpreted signals about the state of the economy, such as the nominal interest rate, because of their adherence to the real bills philosophy. Others deemed defending the gold standard by raising interests and reducing the supply of money and credit to be better for the economy than aiding ailing banks with the opposite actions.

On several occasions, the Federal Reserve did implement policies that modern monetary scholars believe could have stemmed the contraction. In the spring of 1931, the Federal Reserve began to expand the monetary base, but the expansion was insufficient to offset the deflationary effects of the banking crises. In the spring of 1932, after Congress provided the Federal Reserve with the necessary authority, the Federal Reserve expanded the monetary base aggressively. The policy appeared effective initially, but after a few months the Federal Reserve changed course. A series of political and international shocks hit the economy, and the contraction resumed. Overall, the Fed’s efforts to end the deflation and resuscitate the financial system, while well intentioned and based on the best available information, appear to have been too little and too late.

The flaws in the Federal Reserve’s structure became apparent during the initial years of the Great Depression. Congress responded by reforming the Federal Reserve and the entire financial system. Under the Hoover administration, congressional reforms culminated in the  Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act and the Banking Act of 1932 . Under the Roosevelt administration, reforms culminated in the  Emergency Banking Act of 1933 , the  Banking Act of 1933 (commonly called Glass-Steagall) , the  Gold Reserve Act of 1934 , and the  Banking Act of 1935 . This legislation shifted some of the Federal Reserve’s responsibilities to the Treasury Department and to new federal agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. These agencies dominated monetary and banking policy until the 1950s.

The reforms of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s turned the Federal Reserve into a modern central bank. The creation of the modern intellectual framework underlying economic policy took longer and continues today. The Fed’s combination of a well-designed central bank and an effective conceptual framework enabled Bernanke to state confidently that “we won’t do it again.”

  • 1  These business cycle dates come from the National Bureau of Economic Research . Additional materials on the Federal Reserve can be found at the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Bibliography

Bernanke, Ben. Essays on the Great Depression . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Bernanke, Ben, “ On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday ," Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke at the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, November 8, 2002.

Chandler, Lester V. American Monetary Policy, 1928 to 1941 . New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

Chandler, Lester V. American’s Greatest Depression, 1929-1941 . New York: Harper Collins, 1970.

Eichengreen, Barry. “The Origins and Nature of the Great Slump Revisited.” Economic History Review 45, no. 2 (May 1992): 213–239.

Friedman, Milton and Anna Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960 . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Kindleberger, Charles P. The World in Depression, 1929-1939 : Revised and Enlarged Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Meltzer, Allan. A History of the Federal Reserve: Volume 1, 1913 to 1951 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Romer, Christina D. “The Nation in Depression.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, no. 2 (1993): 19-39.

Temin, Peter. Lessons from the Great Depression (Lionel Robbins Lectures) . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.

Written as of November 22, 2013. See disclaimer .

Essays in this Time Period

  • Bank Holiday of 1933
  • Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall)
  • Banking Act of 1935
  • Banking Acts of 1932
  • Banking Panics of 1930-31
  • Banking Panics of 1931-33
  • Stock Market Crash of 1929
  • Emergency Banking Act of 1933
  • Gold Reserve Act of 1934
  • Recession of 1937–38
  • Roosevelt's Gold Program

Federal Reserve History

St. Louis Fed Research Division Logo

Essays on the Great Depression

  • Ben S. Bernanke

Before you purchase audiobooks and ebooks

Please note that audiobooks and ebooks purchased from this site must be accessed on the Princeton University Press app. After you make your purchase, you will receive an email with instructions on how to download the app. Learn more about audio and ebooks .

Support your local independent bookstore.

  • United States
  • United Kingdom

Economics & Finance

From the Nobel Prize–winning economist and former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, a landmark book that provides vital lessons for understanding financial crises and their sometimes-catastrophic economic effects

causes of the great depression essay

  • Download Cover

As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s—work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. This influential work is collected in Essays on the Great Depression , an important account of the origins of the Depression and the economic lessons it teaches.

"Bernanke certainly knows the importance of well-functioning markets. In Essays on the Great Depression he wrote persuasively that runs on the banks and extensive defaults on loans reduced the efficiency of the financial sector, prevented it from doing its normal job in allocating resources, and contributed to the Depression severity. The Depression-era problems he studied are mirrored by similar issues today, and they need urgent attention."—Robert J. Shiller, New York Times

"Bernanke probably knows more about the Depression of the 1930s, about specific events and economic interpretations, than any other living person."—Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report

"Tempting as it is to focus on President Herbert Hoover and the 1929 U.S. market crash, Bernanke explores conditions across dozens of countries—assessing where banking crises erupted, how deeply economic activity plummeted and which central banks made the right calls."—Carlos Lozada, Washington Post

"Having devoted much of his career to studying the causes of the Great Depression, Bernanke was the academic expert on how to prevent financial crises from spinning out of control and threatening the general economy. One line from his Essays on the Great Depression sounds especially prescient today: 'To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.'"—Roger Lowenstein, New York Times Magazine

"Fortunately, before he became entangled in these restrictions [Bernanke] did edit and help write a book, Essays on the Great Depression . . . . Bernanke's motive was that understanding the depression would provide important clues to what can go wrong with capitalist market systems."—Samuel Brittan, Financial Times

"The financial crisis has made Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's book Essays on the Great Depression a hot seller. . . . Bernanke, a former Princeton University economist, is considered the pre-eminent living scholar of the Great Depression. He is practicing today what he preached in his book: Flood the system with money to avoid a depression."—Dennis Cauchon, USA Today

"When Ben Bernanke arrived at the Federal Reserve in February 2006 as the new chairman of the central bank, he had a copy of his 2001 book, Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience , tucked under his arm. Not literally, of course. He was hoping to convince his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee of the value of an explicit inflation target. Little did he know that less than two years later he'd be shelving Inflation Targeting and turning to Essays on the Great Depression , another of his books, for guidance. In his book of essays, Bernanke calls the Great Depression the 'Holy Grail of macroeconomics.' He writes that 'the experience of the 1930s continues to influence macroeconomists' beliefs, policy recommendations, and research agendas.'"—Caroline Baum, Bloomberg.com

"With some observers saying that the ongoing financial crisis could be the worst since the Great Depression, the greatest living expert on that period is getting the chance to apply its economic lessons. . . . In Essays on the Great Depression . . . [Bernanke] notes that understanding that period is the 'holy grail of macroeconomics.'"—Spencer Jakab, Dow Jones Newswires

"Bernanke is the master of applied microeconomics. Not only is he technically proficient but his ability to place his results in a larger macroeconomic context is unparalleled."—Mark Toma, Financial History Review

"This influential body of work is a significant contribution to our understanding the depth and persistence of the Great Depression. . . . This book will become a standard reference in the field of business cycle research."—Randall Kroszner, University of Chicago

"Bernanke's work has had a powerful impact on the economics profession, alerting macroeconomists to the advantages of historical analysis, and a number of important figures (James Hamilton, Steve Cecchetti, for example), inspired by his work, have followed him into the field. The nine essays form a remarkably coherent whole."—Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System

"Collecting these essays together will provide a single source for students to find Bernanke's substantial contributions. . . . His papers demonstrate conclusively that the international view of the great depression has impressive explanatory power."—Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stay connected for new books and special offers. Subscribe to receive a welcome discount for your next order. 

  • ebook & Audiobook Cart

The Great Depression

This history of the Great Depression was prepared for The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. It describes real and imagined causes of the Depression, bank failures and deflation, the Fed and the gold standard, the start of recovery, the first New Deal, and the second New Deal. I argue that adherence to the gold standard caused the Depression, that abandoning gold started recovery, and that several of the New Deal measures adopted in the recovery lasted in good order for half a century.

  • Acknowledgements and Disclosures

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

Download Citation Data

More from NBER

In addition to working papers , the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter , the NBER Digest , the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability , the Bulletin on Health , and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship  — as well as online conference reports , video lectures , and interviews .

15th Annual Feldstein Lecture, Mario Draghi, "The Next Flight of the Bumblebee: The Path to Common Fiscal Policy in the Eurozone cover slide

causes of the great depression essay

  • History Classics
  • Your Profile
  • Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
  • Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
  • This Day In History
  • History Podcasts
  • History Vault

5 Causes of the Great Depression

By: Patrick J. Kiger

Updated: April 17, 2023 | Original: March 10, 2022

5 Causes of the Great Depression

The Great Depression , a worldwide economic collapse that began in 1929 and lasted roughly a decade, was a disaster that touched the lives of millions of Americans—from investors who saw their fortunes vanish overnight, to factory workers and clerks who found themselves unemployed and desperate for a way to feed their families.

Some people were reduced to selling apples on street corners to support themselves, while others lost their homes and were forced to survive in shanty towns that became known as “ Hoovervilles ,” a bitterly derisive reference to President Herbert Hoover, who in the early 1930s often claimed that “ prosperity was just around the corner ,” even as economic and trade policy mistakes and reluctance to provide government assistance to ordinary Americans worsened their predicament.

It’s not easy—even for people who’ve lived through the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—to grasp the depths of deprivation to which the economy sank during the Great Depression. When the unemployment rate peaked in 1933, 25.6 percent of American workers—one in four—found themselves unemployed. That’s a vastly higher rate than the 14.7 percent unemployment in April 2020, when the coronavirus forced businesses and factories to shut down.

Things were so bad that of all the days of unemployment experienced by individual American workers in American history, half occurred during the Great Depression, according to University of California, Irvine economics Professor Gary Richardson , who has done extensive research on that period and the subject of downturns in general.

“There have been a lot of ups and downs, but the Great Depression is really the biggest one,” he explains.

It’s not easy to explain exactly why such hard times happened. “For something to be as bad as the Great Depression, you really need multiple things going wrong, in the U.S. and around the world,” Richardson says.

Here are some of the things that historians and economists often point to as factors that combined to lead to the worst economic disaster in history.

1. Vulnerabilities in the Global Economy

Curb Market traders gesture with their hands to trade stocks, on Wall Street, New York City, 1925.

In the 1920s, nations bounced back from the disruption and destruction caused by World War I , with factories and farms producing again, Richardson notes. But the nature of the economy in the United States and elsewhere shifted, as ordinary consumers buying durable goods such as appliances and cars—often on credit—became more and more important.

While that consumption created a lot of wealth for business owners, it also made them vulnerable to sudden shifts in consumer confidence. At the same time, nations that were producing a lot of products and exporting them became fierce competitors. “The war had eliminated a lot of the cooperation between nations that were required to run the international financial system,” Richardson says. That inability to work together at controlling problems meant that any one country’s efforts to control a downturn were less effective.

2. Financial Speculation

The 1920s economic boom helped breed a widespread belief that it was easy to get rich quick if you were bold enough to invest in the right opportunity at the right time. That’s one reason why so many ordinary Americans were fleeced by con artists who sold them on shady schemes , from Florida swampland and nonexistent oil deposits to the notion of buying Spanish mail coupons and redeeming them for U.S. stamps to profit on the weaker Spanish currency.

But the riskiest gambling took place on Wall Street. Investors increasingly bought stocks on margin, in which they put down as little as 10 percent of the price of a stock, and borrowed the rest of the money, with their stock itself as collateral. Corporate stocks soared, and brokers made huge commissions. 

causes of the great depression essay

HISTORY Vault: World War I Documentaries

Stream World War I videos commercial-free in HISTORY Vault.

But the bubble eventually had to burst. It did that on Black Monday, October 28, 1929 , when the Dow Jones average declined nearly 13 percent in one day. That started a period of catastrophic declines that destroyed almost half of the Dow’s value in a single month. By 1932, at the nadir of the financial crisis, the nation’s public companies had lost 89 percent of their value. Scores of investors were ruined, and companies found it difficult to finance their operations.

“The stock market crash did two things,” explains Mary Eschelbach Hansen , a professor of economics at American University. “It had a wealth effect on consumption (when people’s wealth falls, they consume less), and it also made consumers and firms pessimistic. Then came a series of banking panics and failures. Households lost more of their wealth, and the lines of credit that firms used were disrupted. Unemployment soared.”

3. Blunders by the Fed

Floor of the New York Stock Exchange during heavy trading, c. 1926.

The Federal Reserve System, created in 1913, was supposed to ensure the nation’s economic stability by controlling the money supply. But the still-new institution’s policies in the 1920s not only failed to stop the Great Depression but actually may have helped to cause it.

“There was a drastic 67 percent increase in the money supply between 1921 and 1929,” explains Daniel J. Smith , a professor of economics and finance and director of the Political Economy Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University.

That policy led to declining interest rates, which encouraged people to borrow and overinvest. “It also led to unchecked speculation in the formation of a bubble in the stock market,” Smith says. “Normally, overinvestment would lead to rising interest rates, which would act as a natural break to prevent a bubble from forming. This didn’t occur due to the easy monetary policies of the young Fed.”

But eventually, in 1929, the Fed’s board worried that speculation was out of control , and abruptly slammed on the breaks by contracting the money supply and raising interest rates, Smith notes.

The Fed’s move to cool the stock market worked a little too well. “They got the stock market to come down,” Richardson explains. “But then it came down a lot, and it came down very quickly.”

4. The Gold Standard

Back in 1929, the United States—like many other countries at the time—was on the Gold Standard, with the dollar redeemable in gold and pegged to its value. But after the Wall Street crash, nervous investors began to trade their dollars for gold. 

As former Fed chairman Ben Bernacke noted in a 2004 lecture , the Fed then moved to jack up interest rates higher to protect the dollar’s value. But those high-interest rates made it difficult for businesses to borrow the money that they needed to survive, and many ended up closing their doors instead.

5. The Smoot-Hawley Act

Wall Street clerks working long hours computing gains and losses, c. 1929.

Trade protectionists in Congress enacted the Smoot-Hawley Act , which was written in early 1929, while the economy still seemed to be going strong. But after the Wall Street Crash weakened the economy, President Hoover still signed it into law in 1930. The law raised U.S. tariffs by an average of 16 percent, in an effort to shield American factories from the competition with foreign countries’ lower-priced goods. But the move backfired when other countries put tariffs on U.S. exports.

“If you're a country and you impose tariffs that can be good for your domestic industries because your domestic energy might produce more for home consumption,” Richardson says. “But if other countries retaliate, then it could be bad for everybody.”

Combined: A Perfect Economic Storm 

The really unlucky thing was that all those factors combined in a sort of perfect economic storm, whose devastating effects had long-lasting repercussions. As Richardson notes, the U.S. economy didn’t again reach full employment until 1940—just in time for World War II to disrupt consumption with rationing needed to ensure that the military had enough resources. Life didn’t really get back to normal until after the war when the victorious United States emerged as the world’s leading economy.

causes of the great depression essay

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Economics Essays

Friday, September 28, 2012

Causes of great depression, background to great depression:.

  • The 1920s witnessed an economic boom in the US (typified by Ford Motor cars, which made a car within the grasp of ordinary workers for the first time). Industrial output expanded very rapidly. 
  • Sales were often promoted through buying on credit. However, by early 1929, the steam had gone out of the economy and output was beginning to fall.
  • The stock market had boomed to record levels. Price to earning ratios were above historical averages.
  • The US Agricultural sector had been in recession for many more years
  • The UK economy had been experiencing deflation and high unemployment for much of the 1920s. This was mainly due to the cost of the first world war and attempting to rejoin the Gold standard at a pre-world war 1 rate. This meant Sterling was overvalued causing lower exports and slower growth. The US tried to help the UK stay in the gold standard. That meant inflating the US economy, which contributed to the credit boom of the 1920s.
  • Falling share prices caused a collapse in confidence and consumer wealth. Spending fell and the decline in confidence precipitated a desire for savers to withdraw money from their banks.
  • Because of the banking crisis, Banks reduced lending, there was a fall in investment. People lost savings and so reduced consumer spending. The impact on economic confidence was disastrous.

Great Depression in US

causes of the great depression essay

US Deflation

causes of the great depression essay

 Significant fall in US consumer prices.

causes of the great depression essay

  • It increased the difficulty of paying off debts taken out during the 1920s.
  • Falling prices encouraged people to hoard cash rather than spend (Keynes called this the paradox of thrift)
  • Increased real wage unemployment (workers reluctant to accept nominal wage cuts, caused real wages to rise - creating additional unemployment)

Different views of the Great Depression

  • Classical economics assumed Real Output would automatically return to equilibrium (full employment levels), but the great depression showed this to be not true.
  • Keynes said the problem was lack of aggregate demand. Keynes argued passionately that governments should intervene in the economy to stimulate demand through public works scheme - higher spending and borrowing.
  • Keynes heavily criticised the UK government's decision to try balance the budget in 1930 through higher taxes and lower benefits. He said this only worsened the situation.
  • Keynes also pointed to the paradox of thrift .

How important was the Stock Market Crash of 1929?

  • Essays on Credit Crunch 
  • The UK economy in the 1930s 
  • Recession of 1930s vs Recession of 2008-10
  • Essays on the Great Depression by Ben S. Bernanke at Amazon.com

16 comments:

We haven't learned from out past so now we are destined to repeat it. All of the causes of the Great Depression is what we are experiencing it now. Hold on and cause its gonna get worse!

Our economy fluctuates and will not always be balanced, and we are currently in a recession. But now we have FDIC and other types of governmnet programs that will prevent run offs on banks like in the Great Depression. Besides the FED uses tools that control the amount of money that flows in our economy. Of course the job of Allen Greenspand is to ensure Consumer Confidence and if consumer freak out, then our economy is just going to worsen because of a decrease in spending. So my advice would be to not freak out and stop spending, just be more cautious of not getting in debt.

. A “giant suction pump” Here is an article about the fed chairman during the time of the Great Depression and what he thought caused it. The same thing is happening again for the same reasons. Too high concentration of wealth for the top 1%er's. Please read: In Review: America's Most Egalitarian Banker Marriner S. Eccles, Beckoning Frontiers: Public and Personal Recollections. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. At the start of the Great Depression, Marriner Eccles hardly seemed someone who might lead a charge against the economic orthodoxies that justified grand hoards of private fortune. By the early 1930s, after all, the Utah-born Eccles had become the top banker in the Mountain West, the organizer of the first multibank holding company in the United States. But Eccles had also come to understand, after watching the great speculative bubbles of the 1920s pop into massive misery, that prosperity — to endure — needs to be shared. Eccles began speaking out on that theme, shortly after the Great Depression began, and soon caught the attention of the early New Dealers. In 1933, Eccles would become an assistant secretary of the treasury. A year later, Franklin Roosevelt would appoint him to the Federal Reserve Board. He would become Board chair in 1935 and remain in that central position for the next 13 years. No one individual, over those years, had more of an impact on economic policy in the United States. Looking back on those years, in his 1951 memoir Beckoning Frontiers, Eccles would do his best to explain the impact he set out to make. Mass production, he noted at the outset, demands mass consumption, but people can’t afford to consume if the wealth an economy generates is concentrating at the top. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, that concentrating was accelerating. A “giant suction pump,” charged Eccles, “had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth.” “In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands,” Eccles observed, “the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.” Sound familiar? The decade of the 1920s that Eccles describes in his 1951 memoir comes across today as eerily familiar. Then as now, the U.S. economy was floating on a sea of debt. Then as now, inequality was hollowing out the nation. Eccles put the matter bluntly: “Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product — in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups — we should have had far greater stability in our economy.” How would Eccles have reacted to our current debt-ridden, war-torn economy? We can’t, of course, know for sure what Eccles would do. But we do know what he did. In 1942, during World War II, a high-powered team of New Deal officials that included Eccles proposed to President Roosevelt that “a ceiling of fifty thousand dollars after taxes should be placed on individual incomes.” In our current dollars, this $50,000 ceiling would equal about $700,000. What did FDR do with the Eccles proposal? He turned around and asked Congress to place a 100 percent tax on all individual income over $25,000. Congress would eventually set the nation’s top tax rate at 94 percent on all income over $200,000, and that top tax rate would hover around 90 percent for the next two decades, years that would see the greatest period of middle class prosperity in U.S. economic history. In 2005, the latest year with statistics available, America’s leading hedge fund managers and the rest of the nation’s top 400 income-earners faced a top tax rate of 35 percent. They actually paid, after loopholes, just 18.2 percent of their incomes in tax. Marriner Eccles would not approve. Stat of the Week In the two decades between 1986 and 2005, America’s top 1 percent of taxpayers saw their share of the nation’s income jump from 11.3 to 21.2 percent. Over those same years, the federal income taxes the top 1 percent paid dropped by an equally stunning margin, from 33.13 percent of total personal income in 1986 to 23.13 percent in 2005, the most current year with IRS stats available. Taxpayers needed to report at least $364,657 in 2005 to enter the top 1 percent. About Too Much Too Much is published by the Council on International and Public Affairs, a nonprofit research and education group founded in 1954. Office: Suite 3C, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017. E-mail: [email protected] As for this not happening again...IT HAS ALREADY STARTED!! I don't care how many government programs there are; things won't get better until confidence is restored. Banks won't lend (even after they received our tax money for that purpose) and consumers won't buy because they don't have the money to spend. You can't have mass production without mass consumption. Hopefully our new president will instill confidence by starting a stimulus package concentrating on renewable energy. This would accomplish: 1.Job creation 2.stimulate investments 3.curb global warming 4.keep American dollars in America 5. Start a new industry (products we can sell around the world) 6.Produce our own clean energy in America 7. Wean ourselves from oil (it won't last anyway!) 8.Provide clean energy for our children So I do have hope but I believe it will take a bold move to veer this ship away from the falls.

We ae all going into the great depression but this time it will be the same year as the history starts with the black president so i bet alot of people believe it's all because of that but it's not and we all just need to make sure that we dont go into debt.

causes of the great depression essay

The crash of the stock market in 1929 did not cause the Great Depression. It did cause a lack of consumer confidence and destruction of wealth, which caused consumers to be more cautions about spending. The biggest contributer of the Great Depression was the government meddeling in the economy. This is mentioned in Ben Bernanke's Macroeconomic textbook, where he states "Economists now recognize the cause of the Great Depression was failed government policy."Yet he seems to forget his own words. In the recession that followed the 1929 stock market crash, we had the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, which raised the average tariff on imports by 70%, sparking a trade war with Europe, crippling international trade and reducing U.S. exports and U.S. GDP. In 1932, Hoover, in an attempt to balance the budget in an election year pushes and congress passes a tax increase (the revenue act of 1932) further depressing consumer demand. Then we had the failure of the FED to recognize the rising real interest rates, as reduced aggregate demand lowered the average price level (deflation) but the increasing number of bank failures caused the money supply to shrink, which raised nominal interest rates. These rising nominal interest rates, coupled with a falling price level resulted in even higher real interest rates. High interest rates slows business investment spending on capital goods and reduces consumer spending on "big ticket" items. By the time many of Roosevelt's programs were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936 the economy was begining to recover. Unemployment was down to 14% from it's 1933 high of 25%. But then Roosevelt pushes the 1937 tax hike and unemployment shoots back up to 17%! Don't blame the free market for the Great Depression. This brief synopsis reveals that it was indeed failed government policy that caused the Great Depresion. It was (as we now see) a laissez-faire economy at the time. What amazes me is that Bernanke thinks that monetary policy by the FED and fiscal policy by Congress can fix our current problem. You had better store some food, some silver coins, and learn how to grow food. We are going to be in this for a while!

@Garvin Smith 1936 * Top tax rate raised to 79 percent. * Economic recovery continues: GNP grows a record 14.1 percent; unemployment falls to 16.9 percent. 1937 * Economists attribute economic growth so far to heavy government spending that is somewhat deficit. Roosevelt, however, fears an unbalanced budget and cuts spending for 1937. That summer, the nation plunges into another recession. Despite this, the yearly GNP rises 5.0 percent, and unemployment falls to 14.3 percent. Tax hikes didn't cause the economy to slump back into a recession. It was the cut in spending that led to the plunge.

Why hasn't the collective wisdom taught us how we got out of the Great Depression of 1929 in order for the public to understand how to effectively get out of the current Great Recession? The public can't vote for the right leaders when they can't get a straight answer about the Depression we did get out of and that's causing so many more people to suffer the consequences 80 years later! I thought we were smarter than that! Reading about it on Wikipedia leaves one to think, huh??

There's no doubt that tax cuts yield economic growth. The solution to the 1920-21 depression was drastic cuts in spending, along with huge tax cuts. Federal revenue increased at such a high rate, 1/3 of the debt added under the progressive Woodrow Wilson's Keynesian economic policies, was eliminated. It was this growth that created the new wealth, that would give new people opportunities to invest, or borrow capital. Hoover offered a progressive response to the crash, with huge spending increases, including a billion dollar bailout program for the banks that made bad loans (sound familiar?) His huge spending increases on public works projects just added to the debt, and led to a need for more revenue. He responded in the exact opposite way he should have. He RAISED taxes in 1932. To make a bad situation even worse, he imposed tariffs.

You know it's trouble when the stock exchange starts dropping drastically. Still, it is not solely responsible for our economic woes. Sometimes it's actually the lack of confidence in spending brought about by the crash that causes the meltdown.

In my own opinion incident such as the great depression is something unavoidable. Time will come that a nation will experience this kind of economic issue and the only thing they can do is, to prepare their company in advance so that if this kind of scenario came up suddenly they could still manage to establish their own company.

The sudden slowdown on the economical activity usually defines whether a certain nation is undergoing through a recession. Obviously, those countries which have tiger economies will greatly be affected by this event. The reason for this unfortunate event can be attributed to perhaps the value of spending on the economy. A simple logic can be apply to these occurrence, the higher the prices are in the market the lesser the public will spend and if that happens, economy will be restless and crawling cause the cash-flow isn't is moving slowly.

causes of the great depression essay

What a bunch of Keynesian crap - what you call "causes" are, in fact, RESULTS of the Great Depression. The real causes for the Great Depression were: Massive contraction in the Money Supply (Fed constricted the supply of money by 33% - This is what CAUSED the huge deflation in prices And the liquidity crisis on Wall Street & the banks. The other great cause was the inelasticity in the prices for labor, so as business revenues declined businesses found it difficult to lower wages so they had do institute lay-offs. Stop w/the Keynesian baloney! And learn something about economics! It ain't rocket science!

causes of the great depression essay

This US depressions affected whole world some or more and also imbalanced economical status of many countries but at that time i took help of Epic Research and really helped me during that period.

For all the high level explanations of 1929 and 2008/09, the one hard constant looks to me to have been an overly liberal credit policy creating paper millionaires in the '20's via stocks and again from the mid '90's until 2007 in real estate. In those situations, it wasn't a lack of hard currency, it was a massive imbalance between paper profits and real assets. That's why consumer confidence is such an important factor. And it's the driving factor behind why the U.S. is in such tremendous trouble regarding Social Security. Just like stock profits (valuations) in 1929 and real estate profits (valuations) by 2008, when it was exposed that AIG couldn't cover the profit insurance they had been selling, the banking system went into a tailspin. What do you think will happen when the checks written for SS no longer represent legal tender? A very scary thought.

I don't know what all bathe fuss is about the cause was massive over leveraging, or better known as debt. This created massive debt deflation which was just kept at arms reach by Roosevelt until the Second World War broke the shackles. We are now in a similar situation but with low inflation and not deflation, but the level of private debt now post the crash is far greater than the Great Depression. I think we're turning Japanese, I think we're turning Japanese, i really think so...........

October 24, 1929, witnessed panicked government leaders who passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff to protect their domestic industries and jobs. This resulted in a 25 percent fall in the total number of units. Though the U.S. economy felt the pains of the Great Depression six months before other economies, its actual impact was felt in October 1929 when the stock market prices collapsed in the New York Stock Exchange. Besides tarnishing thousands of individual investors, the Great Depression affected a lot many banks and other financial institutions as well. When was the Great Depression? What caused it?

Post a Comment

The Three Main Causes of Great Depression Essay

The main causes of great depression are reduction in purchasing, stock market crash, and banks closures.

In 1920s, the new methods of manufacturing and many industries made America’s economy to growl because it was able to produce a lot of raw materials and machinery. Many citizens increased profits especially in the stock market.

However, this period took only 8 years and in the ninth year, the economy begun to go down, and this led to fear among the citizens. Thus, great depression was experienced all over and for this reason, the great prosperity was followed by great depression. This paper sheds light on the causes that led to the great depression in America

According to Bordo and White, the great depression begun in 1929 and many people suffered because all the businesses had failed in many sectors, including agriculture and banks (45). This led to many people losing their jobs especially the mineworkers; thus, there was reduction in purchasing.

Despite the fact that farmers produced many farm goods and products, demand was very low. Those workers in the farms lost their jobs because the farm products prices were too low and the main farmer could not afford to pay the workers. Black employees were the most affected because they were laid off to create vacancies for the whites. People who were employed could not buy produced goods, from either the textile or other industries because their wages were decreased.

Parker affirms that due to all the problems it was not easy to circulate money and people who were jobless moved from one place to another throughout the country to look for greener pastures (104). Most of them followed the railroads while boarding trains in the hope to get jobs in other towns. While moving in these towns some opted to live in the shanty towns whose houses were build with cardboard and driftwood.

As companies continued to lay off their workers, many problems arose because those who were paying their purchased goods through hire purchase were unable to complete their payments and hence the sellers repossessed them. People were misled by economic prosperity, which was there in early 1920s’, and this is why they bought items on credit and hire purchase to pay for a period of one year or more depending on their salaries.

Thomas and Fergusson argue that another main cause of depression was the Stock Market Crash (23). During June and August 1929, the stock market levels increased and reached to the uppermost point. Many economists such as Irving were impressed by the stock prices.

However, after the increase, it started dropping slowly but later a huge drop followed and this happened on the months of October and September, but the most considerable drop was experienced on one Thursday, which the American referred to as black Thursday.

People were selling their stocks and a big crowd gathered on the Stock exchange Wall Street. This led to some people committing suicide. Some of the bankers were still positive, they reinvested a huge amount of money in the stock market, and people purchased the stocks.

Soon after, the stock holders lost the money they had invested, the loss was estimated to be more than 40 billion dollars. Some of the banks closed since their investment depended on the citizens and this was due to the crash.

Ivan outlines that bank closures is also another cause of depression because when the people realized that some of the banks had been closed, they rushed to withdraw their money from the few which were open, and this led to further closing of more banks and those who did not withdraw before the closure became bankrupt (26). Since people did not insure their bank deposits, many of them lost their money.

The very few which remained ceased to give bank loans and this worsened the situation since there were less expenditures. The banks also experienced rising debts because people were unable to repay them.

In conclusion, all these events led to the depression all over America with some people committing suicide and others moving from their land to other towns without knowing where they were destined. Many families fell apart, as well as divorces among the married couples.

Works Cited

Bordo, Goldin and Eugene White. The defining Moment: The depression and the American Economy in the Twentieth Century . Indiana University Press, Indiana, 2000. Print.

Ivan R. (2002). Rethinking the Great Depression . Chicago: Dee Publishers, 2002. Print.

Parker, E. D. Reflections of Great Depression . Garden City, NY: Double Day & Company, 2002. Print.

Thomas, E. and Ferguson, David. The Great Depression. An International Disaster of Perverse Economic policies . Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Print.

  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 6). The Three Main Causes of Great Depression. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-three-main-causes-of-great-depression/

"The Three Main Causes of Great Depression." IvyPanda , 6 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-three-main-causes-of-great-depression/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'The Three Main Causes of Great Depression'. 6 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "The Three Main Causes of Great Depression." June 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-three-main-causes-of-great-depression/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Three Main Causes of Great Depression." June 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-three-main-causes-of-great-depression/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Three Main Causes of Great Depression." June 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-three-main-causes-of-great-depression/.

  • The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton
  • Nursing: Unit Closures and Restructuring
  • The stock market crash of 1929
  • Estee Lauder Companies in Dubai: Internal Communication
  • The Great Depression of 1929
  • Historical Comparison of 1929 Crash and Present
  • The Great Depression: Prerequisites, Essence, and Consequences
  • The Roaring 1920s
  • Young Murders and Juvenile Justice in Canada
  • The red sludge ecological disaster
  • The Declaration of Independence: The Three Copies and Drafts, and Their Relation to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”
  • Congressman Grijalva and Howard Zinn
  • The Illusive Race Question
  • Anglos and Mexicans in the Twenty First Century
  • The Industrial Revolution in the American History
  • Free AI Essay Writer
  • AI Outline Generator
  • AI Paragraph Generator
  • Paragraph Expander
  • Essay Expander
  • Literature Review Generator
  • Research Paper Generator
  • Thesis Generator
  • Paraphrasing tool
  • AI Rewording Tool
  • AI Sentence Rewriter
  • AI Rephraser
  • AI Paragraph Rewriter
  • Summarizing Tool
  • AI Content Shortener
  • Plagiarism Checker
  • AI Detector
  • AI Essay Checker
  • Citation Generator
  • Reference Finder
  • Book Citation Generator
  • Legal Citation Generator
  • Journal Citation Generator
  • Reference Citation Generator
  • Scientific Citation Generator
  • Source Citation Generator
  • Website Citation Generator
  • URL Citation Generator
  • AI Writing Guides
  • AI Detection Guides
  • Citation Guides
  • Grammar Guides
  • Paraphrasing Guides
  • Plagiarism Guides
  • Summary Writing Guides
  • STEM Guides
  • Humanities Guides
  • Language Learning Guides
  • Coding Guides
  • Top Lists and Recommendations
  • AI Detectors
  • AI Writing Services
  • Coding Homework Help
  • Citation Generators
  • Editing Websites
  • Essay Writing Websites
  • Language Learning Websites
  • Math Solvers
  • Paraphrasers
  • Plagiarism Checkers
  • Reference Finders
  • Spell Checkers
  • Summarizers
  • Tutoring Websites
  • Critical Essay Examples and Samples
  • Descriptive Essay Examples and Samples 2024
  • Compare and Contrast Essay Examples and Samples
  • Narrative Essay Examples and Samples
  • Best Persuasive Essay Examples
  • Expository Essay Examples and Samples
  • Cause and Effect Essay Examples and Samples 2024
  • Definition Essay Examples and Samples
  • Reflective Essay Examples and Samples
  • Analytical Essay Examples and Samples 2024
  • Summary Essay Examples and Samples
  • Evaluation Essay Examples and Samples
  • Argumentative Essay Examples and Samples
  • NHS Essay Examples and Samples
  • Discourse Community Essay Examples
  • Essay on Synthesis Examples, Samples
  • Essay on Racism Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Gun Violence Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Mental Health Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Nursing Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Gun Control Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Education Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Who Am I Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Bullying Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Artificial Intelligence Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Music Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Problem Solution Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Integrity Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Leadership Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Domestic Violence Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Respect Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Profile Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Life Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Autobiographical Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Obesity Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Cyberbullying Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Technology Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Professionalism Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Career Goals Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Animal Testing Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Drug Abuse Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Immigrations Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Capital Punishment Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Communication Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Friendship Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Community Service Examples and Samples
  • Essay on My Family Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Frankenstein Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Pro Life Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Anxiety Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Industrial Revolution Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Research Argument Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Food Examples and Samples

Essay on Great Depression Examples and Samples

  • Essay on Self-Reflection Examples and Samples
  • Essay on The Great Gatsby Examples and Samples
  • Essay On What Does It Mean to Be American Examples and Samples
  • Essay on World War 2 Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Ethics Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Concert Review Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Fahrenheit 451 Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Nursing Scholarship Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Pro Choice Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Process Analysis Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Solar Energy Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Personal Narrative Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Hamlet Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Civil Rights Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Rhetoric Examples and Samples
  • Essay on Martin Luther King Examples and Samples

Recent Articles

Income inequality concept

May 27 2023

Why Does Income Inequality Matter. Essay Sample, Example

Great Depression

Sep 21 2018

Causes of the Great Depression Essay Sample, Example

Remember Me

What is your profession ? Student Teacher Writer Other

Forgotten Password?

Username or Email

  • Undergraduate
  • High School
  • Architecture
  • American History
  • Asian History
  • Antique Literature
  • American Literature
  • Asian Literature
  • Classic English Literature
  • World Literature
  • Creative Writing
  • Linguistics
  • Criminal Justice
  • Legal Issues
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Political Science
  • World Affairs
  • African-American Studies
  • East European Studies
  • Latin-American Studies
  • Native-American Studies
  • West European Studies
  • Family and Consumer Science
  • Social Issues
  • Women and Gender Studies
  • Social Work
  • Natural Sciences
  • Pharmacology
  • Earth science
  • Agriculture
  • Agricultural Studies
  • Computer Science
  • IT Management
  • Mathematics
  • Investments
  • Engineering and Technology
  • Engineering
  • Aeronautics
  • Medicine and Health
  • Alternative Medicine
  • Communications and Media
  • Advertising
  • Communication Strategies
  • Public Relations
  • Educational Theories
  • Teacher's Career
  • Chicago/Turabian
  • Company Analysis
  • Education Theories
  • Shakespeare
  • Canadian Studies
  • Food Safety
  • Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
  • Movie Review
  • Admission Essay
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Application Essay
  • Article Critique
  • Article Review
  • Article Writing
  • Book Review
  • Business Plan
  • Business Proposal
  • Capstone Project
  • Cover Letter
  • Creative Essay
  • Dissertation
  • Dissertation - Abstract
  • Dissertation - Conclusion
  • Dissertation - Discussion
  • Dissertation - Hypothesis
  • Dissertation - Introduction
  • Dissertation - Literature
  • Dissertation - Methodology
  • Dissertation - Results
  • GCSE Coursework
  • Grant Proposal
  • Marketing Plan
  • Multiple Choice Quiz
  • Personal Statement
  • Power Point Presentation
  • Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes
  • Questionnaire
  • Reaction Paper

Research Paper

  • Research Proposal
  • SWOT analysis
  • Thesis Paper
  • Online Quiz
  • Literature Review
  • Movie Analysis
  • Statistics problem
  • Math Problem
  • All papers examples
  • How It Works
  • Money Back Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • We Are Hiring

The Great Depression – Cause and Effect, Essay Example

Pages: 2

Words: 614

Hire a Writer for Custom Essay

Use 10% Off Discount: "custom10" in 1 Click 👇

You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

The Great Depression was the longest and most severe financial crisis in the history of the United States, lasting from 1929 until 1939. Even though the recent financial crisis has been termed as the second worst, it pales in comparison to the Great Depression in which unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent at its highest point. Industrial production declined by 47 percent and the real GDP fell by 30 in the U.S. between the peak and trough of the depression. Even though the depression was triggered by a decline in aggregate demand but numerous factors contributed towards its severity including stock market crash, bank panics, and monetary contraction (Romer).

The stock market crash of 1929 has been widely credited as the starting point of the Great Depression. As people lost investments, their uncertainty regarding the future increased. They responded by scaling back their spending activities including purchase of durable goods. The firms also responded to declining demand by suspending their capital investments. This resulted in real GDP falling rapidly in late 1929 and throughout the 1930 (Romer).

As the aggregate demand in the U.S. fell, it also led to decrease in the prices of the goods and services. This is because quantity demanded and price has a positive relationship. Because the nominal wages didn’t decline as much as the general price levels, the real wages of the workers grew and labor became a more expensive factor of production. Faced with a declining demand, the manufacturers could not afford expensive labor and thus, they responded by cutting their workforces (Bernanke). As unemployment rose, it put even greater downward pressure on the consumption activities.

Another reason was the loss of confidence in the banks as a consequence of stock market crash as well as Federal inaction on the failing banks. The bank runs resulted in loss of bank reserves such as gold and currency etc. which means the bank could not provide any more loans. This resulted in contracting money supply which negatively affected both the consumption activities by the consumers as well as the investing activities by the businesses (Wheelock). Falling consumption and investing activities meant falling GDP and lower demand for labor force.

The Fed also made the matters worse by pursuing a contractionary monetary policy. Modern economics has come to the conclusion that decreasing interest rates is a better strategy to spur growth during struggling times and this is how the Fed has dealt with the recent financial crisis and how it acted in the wake of internet bubble bust. But Fed raised interest rates during the Great Depression which made borrowing even more expensive and further reduced consumption and investing activities. It also hurt consumption in another way. The public and the businesses came to expect deflation in the future due to declining price levels which further discouraged them from borrowing. This is because they expected their incomes to fall in the future (Romer).

Thus, it is apparent to some extent that the Great Depression occurred due to inappropriate government response to the crisis which also happened because our understanding of Macroeconomics was still in its infancy. The Great Depression continues to be a topic of intense research and the lessons from the Great Depression have helped us a repeat of a crisis of a similar magnitude. The U.S. government has become a lot better at financial crisis management and is more willing to intervene in the markets when the circumstances demand.

Bernanke, Ben S. “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking February 1995: 1-28.

Romer, Christina D. “Great Depression.” Encyclopaedia Britannica 20 December 2003.

Wheelock, David C. “An Overview of the Great Depression.” St. Louis: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2007.

Stuck with your Essay?

Get in touch with one of our experts for instant help!

The Blue Canyon Pain Clinic, Research Paper Example

Chemical Reagents and Laboratory Methods, Lab Report Example

Time is precious

don’t waste it!

Plagiarism-free guarantee

Privacy guarantee

Secure checkout

Money back guarantee

E-book

Related Essay Samples & Examples

Voting as a civic responsibility, essay example.

Pages: 1

Words: 287

Utilitarianism and Its Applications, Essay Example

Words: 356

The Age-Related Changes of the Older Person, Essay Example

Words: 448

The Problems ESOL Teachers Face, Essay Example

Pages: 8

Words: 2293

Should English Be the Primary Language? Essay Example

Pages: 4

Words: 999

The Term “Social Construction of Reality”, Essay Example

Words: 371

End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

Two teens sit on a bed looking at their phones

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here .

S omething went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics : Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand , the Nordic countries , and beyond . By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

Read: It sure looks like phones are making students dumber

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less , having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens , and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May , OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

graph showing rates of self-harm in children

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound , but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction . Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

Jonathan Haidt: Get phones out of schools now

Related Podcast

As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play .

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults .

From the April 2014 issue: The overprotected kid

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital ––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions–– exacerbated parental fears . Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting . In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

But overprotection is only part of the story. The transition away from a more independent childhood was facilitated by steady improvements in digital technology, which made it easier and more inviting for young people to spend a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone in their rooms. Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for “engagement,” that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.

Triptych: teens on their phones at the mall, park, and bedroom

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007 )—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent , and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns , even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average . The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

These very high numbers do not include time spent in front of screens for school or homework, nor do they include all the time adolescents spend paying only partial attention to events in the real world while thinking about what they’re missing on social media or waiting for their phones to ping. Pew reports that in 2022, one-third of teens said they were on one of the major social-media sites “almost constantly,” and nearly half said the same of the internet in general. For these heavy users, nearly every waking hour is an hour absorbed, in full or in part, by their devices.

overhead image of teens hands with phones

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s , and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media . Exercise declined , too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010 s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

Read: What happens when kids don’t see their peers for months

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied , meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous ; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication , or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit , so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

From the September 2015 issue: The coddling of the American mind

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

graph showing rates of disabilities in US college freshman

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly— one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer . This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “ Internet gaming disorder ,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

Jonathan Haidt: The dangerous experiment on teen girls

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why v ideos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.

graph showing rates of young people who struggle with mental health

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that , from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind , writes ,

The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier.

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

How can it be that an entire generation is hooked on consumer products that so few praise and so many ultimately regret using? Because smartphones and especially social media have put members of Gen Z and their parents into a series of collective-action traps. Once you understand the dynamics of these traps, the escape routes become clear.

diptych: teens on phone on couch and on a swing

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

From the May 2022 issue: Jonathan Haidt on why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem . It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study , these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up .

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

Read: Why Congress keeps failing to protect kids online

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org , suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Even without the help of organizations, parents could break their families out of collective-action traps if they coordinated with the parents of their children’s friends. Together they could create common smartphone rules and organize unsupervised play sessions or encourage hangouts at a home, park, or shopping mall.

teen on her phone in her room

P arents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness .

causes of the great depression essay

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Home — Essay Samples — History — Great Depression — An Analysis of the Causes of the Great Depression

test_template

An Analysis of The Causes of The Great Depression

  • Categories: Great Depression

About this sample

close

Words: 908 |

Published: Mar 1, 2019

Words: 908 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited:

  • Clark, J., & Staeheli, L. (2007). The power of community development: Investing in people and places. Routledge.
  • Dias, P. (2015). Community development and civil society: Making connections in the European context. Routledge.
  • Ferguson, J. (1990). The Anti-politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.
  • Hall, B., & Tandon, R. (1997). Decentralization and community-based service delivery: Key issues for local governance. UNRISD Discussion Paper, (78).
  • Kemp, L., & Taylor, N. (2000). Community-based health promotion: A practical guide. Allen & Unwin.
  • Leighninger, M. (2013). The next form of democracy: How expert rule is giving way to shared governance—and why politics will never be the same. Vanderbilt University Press.
  • Lynch, K., & Lodge, A. (2002). Equality and Power in Community Development. Cambridge University Press.
  • McNamara, R. H. (1981). The origins of community development in America. University of Chicago Press.
  • Rifkin, S. B. (2004). Community development: Learning from the grassroots. IDRC.
  • Salmen, L. F. (1997). A review of community-based rehabilitation as a strategy for assisting disabled persons in developing countries. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal, 8(2), 50-67.

Image of Dr. Charlotte Jacobson

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

  • 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
  • Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

author

Verified writer

  • Expert in: History

writer

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1167 words

3 pages / 1283 words

2 pages / 835 words

2 pages / 945 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s remains one of the most catastrophic economic downturns in the history of the United States. This essay delves into the multifaceted factors that contributed to the Great Depression, its [...]

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the world witnessed one of the most devastating economic crises in modern history – the Great Depression. The depression lasted for over a decade and heavily impacted countries across the [...]

In conclusion, John Steinbeck's writings on the Great Depression offer a profound and empathetic exploration of the era's challenges and hardships. His novels, such as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," provide a deep [...]

Cinderella Man, directed by Ron Howard and released in 2005, is a film that portrays the struggle of an individual during the Great Depression. The movie provides a glimpse into the social issues and challenges faced by the [...]

The Great Depression had a massive impact on everyone throughout the United States, and any number of programs to try and improve the well-being of the American people and the economy were put into place under Franklin D. [...]

It was the 30’s the weather was crazy, and people lived through hardship and intense poverty. During this time a lot of families migrating were impoverished, which led them to toil hard to get through. This photo is called the [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

  • Instructions Followed To The Letter
  • Deadlines Met At Every Stage
  • Unique And Plagiarism Free

causes of the great depression essay

IMAGES

  1. Causes of the Great Depression Essay

    causes of the great depression essay

  2. The Great Depression: Unveiling Complex Causes and Lasting Impact Free

    causes of the great depression essay

  3. The causes and effects of the great depression essay

    causes of the great depression essay

  4. Causes of the Great Depression Essay

    causes of the great depression essay

  5. Causes of the Great Depression

    causes of the great depression essay

  6. The Great Depression Essay: Causes and Influence

    causes of the great depression essay

VIDEO

  1. The Great Depression

  2. The Great Depression Part I: Causes

  3. Great Depression

  4. GREAT DEPRESSION EXPLAINED BY 10TH CLASS NEHA KRISHNA ||VOWEL MINERVA SCHOOL KAVALI ||

  5. The Great Depression: Causes and Consequences

  6. The Great Depression: Causes and Impact

COMMENTS

  1. The Great Depression Essay Sample, 1120 Words, 3 Pages ...

    The Great Depression, experienced between 1929 and 1932, was a period of extreme hardship in America as it forced Americans to experience an economic crisis which left many jobless and hopeless. It was the worst and longest difficult situation in the country's economic history that threw many hardworking people into poverty.

  2. Great Depression

    Great Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939.It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States, the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output ...

  3. Cause and Effects of The Great Depression

    Learn More. Many believe that that the depression was caused by the U.S. stock-market crash that took place in 1929. Nonetheless, there is no consensus on its cause as other factors are also acceptable. The economic devastation of the 1920s led to the Great Depression and brought a tragedy for the whole society.

  4. The Great Depression (article)

    The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in US history. It began in 1929 and did not abate until the end of the 1930s. The stock market crash of October 1929 signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. By 1933, unemployment was at 25 percent and more than 5,000 banks had gone out of business.

  5. Causes of the Great Depression

    The Great Depression of the late 1920s and '30s remains the longest and most severe economic downturn in modern history. Lasting almost 10 years (from late 1929 until about 1939) and affecting nearly every country in the world, it was marked by steep declines in industrial production and in prices (deflation), mass unemployment , banking ...

  6. The Great Depression

    The contraction began in the United States and spread around the globe. The Depression was the longest and deepest downturn in the history of the United States and the modern industrial economy. The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the economic expansion of the Roaring Twenties came to an end. A series of financial crises punctuated ...

  7. Great Depression: Years, Facts & Effects

    The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in modern history, lasting from 1929 until the beginning of World War II in 1939. The causes of the Great Depression included slowing consumer ...

  8. Causes of the Great Depression

    The Great Depression in a monetary view. In their 1963 book A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz laid out their case for a different explanation of the Great Depression. Essentially, the Great Depression, in their view, was caused by the fall of the money supply.

  9. Essays on the Great Depression

    Praise. As chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis, Ben Bernanke helped avert a greater financial disaster than the Great Depression. And he did so by drawing directly on what he had learned from years of studying the causes of the economic catastrophe of the 1930s—work for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize.

  10. The Great Depression

    Issue Date November 1994. This history of the Great Depression was prepared for The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. It describes real and imagined causes of the Depression, bank failures and deflation, the Fed and the gold standard, the start of recovery, the first New Deal, and the second New Deal. I argue that adherence to ...

  11. The Great Depression Essay Examples and Topics for Free

    This essay will discuss the causes and effects of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was an extreme global financial downturn that occurred during the 1930s, starting in the United States and then spread across other countries.

  12. The Great Depression: Causes, Effects, and Lessons Learned

    Conclusion. The Great Depression was a catastrophic event that had profound and long-lasting effects on the world. It was caused by a combination of factors, including the stock market crash, overproduction and underconsumption, and bank failures, and had significant economic, social, and political consequences.

  13. 5 Causes of the Great Depression

    Here are some of the things that historians and economists often point to as factors that combined to lead to the worst economic disaster in history. 1. Vulnerabilities in the Global Economy ...

  14. Economics Essays: Causes of Great Depression

    The authorities appeared unable to stop bank runs and the collapse in confidence in the banking system. Many agree, that it was this failure of the banking system which was the most powerful cause of economic depression. 50% fall in bank lending during the Great Depression. Period in grey - recessions.

  15. The Causes of the Great Depression

    Exclusively available on IvyPanda. The Great Depression is one of America's worse periods in history. The period officially began on what is commonly referred to as the black Tuesday, 29 October 1929. On this day, stock prices dropped to unimaginable levels plunging the country into panic. For almost 10 years, America had a thriving economy ...

  16. PDF Great Depression

    Great Depression. worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world. Although the Depression originated in the United States, it resulted in drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in almost ...

  17. The Great Depression (1920-1940): Suggested Essay Topics

    Suggested Essay Topics. 1 . Explain how three of the following affected American politics or society during the 1920 s:Warren G. Hardingthe Teapot Dome scandalthe Five-Power Naval Treatythe Sacco-Vanzetti TrialProhibitionthe Scopes Monkey Trial. 2 .

  18. Causes of the Great Depression Essay

    Causes of the Great Depression Essay: One of the most devastating economic situations that occurred in the history of America is referred to as the Great Depression. It is known to have ruined the entire economy, destroyed the markets, and resulted in an increase in the unemployment rate. The crashing of the stock market caused havoc […]

  19. The Three Main Causes of Great Depression Essay

    This paper sheds light on the causes that led to the great depression in America. According to Bordo and White, the great depression begun in 1929 and many people suffered because all the businesses had failed in many sectors, including agriculture and banks (45). This led to many people losing their jobs especially the mineworkers; thus, there ...

  20. Great Depression Essay Example 2024: Best Sample

    Essay on Great Depression Examples and Samples The Great Depression was a severe economic downturn that affected millions of people worldwide. Its causes, effects, and the response of governments and societies are one of the most popular topics discussed in class.

  21. The Great Depression

    The Great Depression was the longest and most severe financial crisis in the history of the United States, lasting from 1929 until 1939. Even though the recent financial crisis has been termed as the second worst, it pales in comparison to the Great Depression in which unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent at its highest point.

  22. Causes of the Great Depression Essay

    The Great Depression, starting in 1929 on Black Tuesday, was the crash of the United States economy. During that time, 25% of Americans were unemployed, and millions lost their savings due to bank failure, leaving them poor and frustrated with the government. Causes of the Great Depression include the overproduction of crops and the deduction ...

  23. The Causes and Effects of The Great Depression

    This essay will discuss the causes and effects of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was an extreme global financial downturn that occurred during the 1930s, starting in the United States and then spread across other countries. Although many countries, including the US, have faced significant economic downturns since, none could compare ...

  24. The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood

    By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The ...

  25. An Analysis of The Causes of The Great Depression

    The Great Depression was caused by the stock market crashing, from overproduction and underconsumption, and from the banks lending out too much money. These three things combined led to the worst economic disaster in history. ... The essay "An Analysis of The Causes of The Great Depression" demonstrates a strong level of organization and focus ...