Interesting article. A lot of the stuff in there really doesn't surprise me though if you view it through the lens of how tough the times were - if born in 1910, there's WWI and the depression during one's youth and early adulthood.
Is that really that surprising? People born in the 1940's would have lived through a massive economic upswing post WW2. While their parents probably experience the Great Depression through their 30's.
My grandfather was born in the year 1900 (he had my mom in 1960). I was born in the 80s. I knew about all the wars and the Great Depression by the time I was 8. It was frequently talked about, particularly the Depression, among the elders in my family. And my brother and I were always fascinated with the big wars from a young age. At any rate, my great grandmother would save EVERYTHING. Nothing ever went to waste. No food, no item, was thrown away willy nilly. She had the same appliances for decades (they actually lasted). She would save up bottles and cans and actually turn them in for money. She raised 3 kids as a widow in the Depression. I never, ever got the impression that my grandparents or great-grandparents had it worse than me. I knew by the way they carried themselves. They grew up in a time of scarcity and the influence of that carried with them until death.
Must've been quite the statistical masterpiece to disentangle it from the World Wars and the Great Depression. Off course extrapolating conclusions from early 20th century education and career progression to the 21st will be an even greater achievement.
Wow, I found that a very powerful and persuasive article. One question is why don't they show the stress index from 1870-1940? Stress obviously went up during the civil war, but was there relief after? Stress prob. went down in the 1920s but up by 1930.
Anecdote, not data: My father was born into the Great Depression. He said you couldn't buy thread - not because you didn't have money to buy it, but because all the thread factories had closed, and there was literally no thread to buy.
Data: The US unemployment rate peaked at 25%.
So, yeah, things were (much) worse during the Great Depression. I have no data on whether people were depressed then (though the final lines of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, his message to the country, were "Buck up" and then "Smile"). But I know that it left deep marks on people. When there just wasn't stuff, and there was no promise that there ever would be stuff, it affected people for decades after it was over.
Okay but this was the start of some pretty dark times, so I think it's necessary to be historically accurate here which is not the case. The great depression followed the first more or less industrialized war, also the geo-political situation was a completely different one.
There was a depression in 1920/21. Of course, there were multiple factors that led to that not the least of which were lots of soldiers returning from WWI.
Also, lots of people worked from home in 1918. 40% of people lived on farms in 1900 so probably not much change from that by 1918.
The depression created certain visuals that have no parallel today, but the experiences of ordinary people might not be so different. The depression was not bad at all if you still had your job, which over 3/4ths of people did. (Government favored wage supports over full employment.) Only a minority of people really suffered.
The depression was an era of luxury supercars and massive new estates. Large numbers of business elite made fortunes or still had great wealth from the 20s.
Today may look much more like 1930 than you realize.
As my Grandpa (child of the great depression) said in his typical ineloquent yet wise way: "Back in my day, when we weren't happy we were fine with it!"
All of this reminds me of the modern version of the Great Depression. Economists have gotten smarter this time around and have covered up the unemployment rate and CPI, but it’s mostly the same.
Studs Terkel, probably the most famous interviewer / oral historian who’s ever lived, wrote a book containing hundreds of oral histories about the Depression. It sounds just like today:
The Great Depression was a trying time for people all over the world, research essay topics such as this are an interesting possibility. In America, it was especially difficult.
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