Depression and the Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Social Provision ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ◽  
High Place

This chapter navigates the 1930s and groups two impulses into it: responding to the Great Depression and building a welfare state equipped with instruments of social provision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats blended these two impulses when they executed their New Deal in the 1930s. However, on current inspection, the blend is confusing and sometimes contradictory, and there is a difference in time span. Responding to the Great Depression was clearly a 1930s drive; whereas the Social Security Act of 1935 still enjoys its high place at the top of the American welfare state. The chapter shows how the timeline on building U.S. social provision runs a lot longer before and afterward.

Toward a National Minimum

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-260
Author(s):  
Anya Jabour
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Child Labor ◽  
Federally Funded ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 9 traces Breckinridge’s contributions to the nascent welfare state during the Great Depression. Breckinridge and other activist women made it their mission to establish a national minimum for all Americans by crafting a federal welfare state. Building on the groundwork they had laid in the Progressive era, Breckinridge and her allies in the New Deal administration--especially in the U.S. Children’s Bureau--insisted that it was the federal government’s responsibility to care for all its citizens. They worked to establish federally funded social services, ban child labor, and establish a minimum wage under the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

The Birth of the Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The University ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter examines the rise of the welfare state in the United States following the Great Depression. It begins with a historical background on the welfare state, tracing its origins to Germany under Count Otto von Bismarck and discussing Britain's social welfare legislation that was passed in 1911. It then considers the views of Arthur C. Pigou, who published his basic work on economics, The Economics of Welfare, in 1920, and a host of factors that sparked the movement toward the welfare state. In particular, it looks at the role of the institutionalists, led by John R. Commons, and the University of Wisconsin as the source of both the ideas and the practical initiative basic to the welfare legislation. Finally, it describes the Social Security Act of 1935 and the business reaction to it.

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