Great depression

The In fact, historical research shows that during the 20th century, increases in U.S. mortality often occurred during times of economic prosperity, while decreases occurred during economic depressions or recessions. In the first few years after the 1929 stock market crash, the only major cause of death that increased was suicide, says PNAS about life and death during the Great Depression. While suicides went up, Tapia found that deaths from cardiovascular and renal diseases stabilized between 1930 and 1932, the worst years of the depression. Traffic deaths dropped in 1932. Deaths from tuberculosis, the flu and pneumonia also declined. Bankrupt investor Walter Thornton tries to sell his luxury roadster for $100 cash on the streets of New York City following the 1929 stock market crash. There are no firm answers as to why Americans lived longer during the worst years of the depression, but scholars have made some suggestions. Take traffic deaths: Car use increased during the 1920s, and with it, so too did traffic-related deaths. One possible explanation for their decline in the 1930s is that, with higher rates of unemployment, there were just fewer people on the road. Fewer people could afford to own cars, too—as demonstrated by a famous picture(above) of a man trying to sell his car after losing his money on the stock market. There’s also research suggesting that during U.S. economic expansions, people smoke more, experience more stress and get less sleep. All these factor...

Introduction The boom years of the 1920s seemed to come to an abrupt end with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. However, this was not the only cause of the global financial crisis that consumed America in the 1930s. In fact, there were many causes of the Great Depression, including bank failures, overproduction, and structural failings in the banking system. Overproduction Mass production was a cause of both boom and bust. Whilst it had fuelled the mass consumption in the 1920s, by the end of the decade, demand could not keep up with production. Many people had financed purchases of consumer products with loans and credit, so after the Wall Street Crash it became almost impossible to pay off these debts. As the economic crisis engulfed the developed world, America was unable to sell these goods to Europe either. Overproduction was also the cause of an agricultural economic crisis. By the middle of the 1920s American farmers were producing more food than the population was consuming. To keep up with demand during World War One, farmers mechanised their techniques to increase output. However, this was an expensive process that put many farmers in debt. Furthermore, land prices for many farmers dropped by as much as 40 per cent. As a result, the agricultural system began to fail throughout the 1920s, leaving large sections of the population with little money and no work. Thus, as demand dropped with increasing supply, the price of products fell, in turn leaving the over-...

Table of Contents • • • • • • • • The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn that lasted for many years. • It started in the United States and affected almost every country. • One of the most important things it did was make people want to get new jobs. The Great Depression was the worst economic event in history. The Great Depression started with the stock market crash of 1929. It lasted until World War II ended, which was 1946. Economists and historians often say that this is the worst event in modern history. The stock market crash in October 1929 was the beginning of the Great Depression. By 1933, there were 25% unemployment rates. More than 5,000 banks had closed. President Herbert Hoover tried to fix this by using the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, but these measures did not work well enough. Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1932. His New Deal offered a different approach to solving the Great Depression. What caused the Great Depression The U.S. economy was excellent, and people made a lot of money from stocks in the 1920s. People had stock exchanges where they could buy and sell stocks, but some people were doing things like putting their savings into the stock market for no good reason, which led to a big crash later on. The stock market started to go down in the 1920s. Unemployment went up. Jobs became hard to find. Banks had large loans that they could not sell on the market. The stock prices were higher than they should have been because p...