The Birth of Modern Entitlement Programs: Reports from the Field and Implications for Welfare Policy

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Paul Hill ◽  
Elizabeth C. Hirschman ◽  
John F. Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Consumer Behavior ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Primary Analysis ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Present Decade

One of the most controversial public policy debates of the present decade involves entitlement programs for the poor. Many of these programs originated during the widespread poverty of the Great Depression. The authors reconstruct what consumers experienced during the Great Depression through a primary analysis of observations of consumer behavior, which are preserved in archival reports, and a secondary analysis of letters expressing the consumers’ plight that the consumers themselves authored and sent to various government officials. The four themes resulting from the analyses of these data are (1) consumption conditions, (2) labor as an expendable resource, (3) class and ethnic conflict, and (4) return to self-sufficient modes of production. The broader implications of these historic events for consumer researchers interested in current poverty issues and public policy are provided in the conclusion.

“It Ain’t Hardly Worth the Trouble to Go on Living”

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-90
Author(s):  
Justin Mellette
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Erskine Caldwell ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Tenant Farming

Chapter 2 focuses on Erskine Caldwell and seeks to complicate understandings of his best-known works Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre. Though often derided for mocking the poor and using them as comic relief, Caldwell works to instil a sense of anger in readers as he reveals the economic plight of tenant farming during the Great Depression. In addition, the chapter looks at Caldwell's nonfiction work, including his phototext You Have Seen Their Faces, written with photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and contrasts its cultural context with the comparatively better known Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In addition, the chapter considers Caldwell's journalism, which originally raised national attention to the plight of the farmers he later immortalized in his fiction. Finally, the chapter closes by considering Caldwell’s later career and fall from critical favour.

scholarly journals The “Hidden Depression” that never really went away

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-40
Author(s):  
Anaru Eketone
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Serious Disease

Covid-19 is a unique conjunction of a serious disease pandemic coupled with a serious economic crisis. I took the opportunity during level four lockdown to catch up on some reading. Two books in particular discussed the previous two named depressions that Aotearoa New Zealand went through. Children of the Poor by John A. Lee (1973) dealt with poverty in Dunedin following the “Long Depression” of the late 19th century and The Slump by Tony Simpson (1990) looked at the lead-up to the “Great Depression”, its effects and its lasting legacy.

Bank Failures, The Great Depression, and Other “Contagious” Events

2019 ◽  
pp. 909-927
Author(s):  
Charles W. Calomiris
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Deposit Insurance ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Bank Failures ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Lender Of Last Resort ◽  
Safety Nets ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression

Deposit withdrawal pressures on banks, which sometimes take the form of sudden runs, have figured prominently in the discussion of public policy toward banks and the construction of safety nets such as deposit insurance and the lender of last resort. This chapter examines historical evidence from the Great Depression, and other episodes, on the factors that prompted withdrawals, the discussion of contagious runs, and the public policy implications. The historical evidence is presented in detail and is connected to the debate over the proper roles of deposit market discipline via the threat of withdrawals, the insurance of deposits, and lender-of-last-resort support for banks facing withdrawal pressures.

Photo-Narratives and the Poor White Self since the FSA

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-62
Author(s):  
Sarah Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Dorothy Allison ◽  
Farm Security Administration ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The Relationship

After briefly outlining the work of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers and writers during the Great Depression, the chapter turns to rephotography projects, namely that of Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, to explore the FSA’s legacy. The chapter interrogates the relationship and tension between aesthetics and activism as it examines several contemporary photo-narratives focused on Appalachia. In addition to critically discussing the work of Appalshop, it questions the representation of the poor in photo-narratives by, amongst others, Shelby Lee Adams, Tim Barnwell and Susan Lipper. The chapter focuses on questions of counter-visuality as it presents contemporary life-writing by writers such as Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, Barbara Robinette Moss and Janisse Ray, as a vehicle for producing counter-visual legacies.

4. Repeal

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Alcohol Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
National Crisis ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
And Control

By the late Twenties, Americans increasingly recognized that prohibition could not work, but getting the political system to tackle the issue was hard. ‘Repeal’ explains that it would take another national crisis, the Great Depression, to end prohibition. As the economy declined in the early Thirties, government officials faced falling revenues while the demand for public services increased. This appetite for revenue, along with changing public opinion, forced reconsideration of alcohol policy. The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified in December 1933. Alcohol became widely available, but high taxes kept the price high enough to reduce consumption, state governments determined where alcohol was sold or consumed, and control boards decided the circumstances under which it was drunk.

The Siting Dilemma

2018 ◽  
pp. 35-57
Author(s):  
Lance Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Housing Assistance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression

From the Great Depression until the 1970s, project-based housing assistance, in the form of the Public Housing Program, was planned and developed in a way that reinforced existing patterns of residential segregation by race. As the victims of public policy that promoted segregation, African Americans decried the way that public housing was used to expand and maintain the ghetto. The dire and persistent need for decent affordable housing and the concomitant resources that develop and maintain such housing, however, have complicated the African American response to segregated affordable housing. This complex and multifaceted stance toward segregated affordable housing has had implications for affordable housing policy from the Public Housing Program through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. This chapter chronicles the African American response and considers the implications of this response for past, present, and future public policy.

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