The Impact

The Great Depression had a substantial and varied impact on the lives of Americans. Physically and psychologically, it was devastating to many people, who not only lacked adequate food, shelter, and clothing but felt they were to blame for their desperate state.

Although few people died from starvation, many did not have enough to eat. Some people searched garbage dumps for food or ate weeds. The psychological impact was equally damaging. During the prosperity of the 1920's, many Americans believed success went to those who deserved it. Given that attitude, the unemployment brought by the depression of the 1930's was a crushing blow. If the economic system really distribted rewards on the basis of merit, those who lost their jobs had to conclude that it was their own fault. Self-blame and self-doubt became epidemic.

These attitudes declined after the New Deal began, however. The establishment of government programs to counteract the depression indicated to many of the unemployed that the crisis was a large social problem, not a matter of personal failing. Still, having to ask for assistance was humiliating for many men who had thought of themselves as self-sufficient and breadwinners for their families.

Effects of the depression on children were often radically different from the impact on their parents.

During the depression many children took on greater responsibilities at an earlier age than later generations would. Some teenagers found jobs when their parents could not, reversing the normal roles of provider and dependent. Sometimes children had to comfort their despairing parents.

The depression's impact was less dramatic, but ultimately more damaging, for minorities in America than for whites. By 1932 about 50 percent of he nation's black workers were unemployed. Blacks were frequently forced out of jobs in order to give them to unemployed whites.

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