Overview

This classic study of the effect of unemployment and of the ways of relieving it upon actual, typical families of the 1930s and 1940s is a vivid, startling picture of the demoralizing influence and consequences of America's relief policies during the Depression years. The study comprises an incisive interpretation of the problem and a series of absorbing human interest stories of representative families on relief - cases selected from experiences of relief, including the records of families from various religious groups in an exhaustive study conducted in New York City. Most research on unemployment of the 1930s conspicuously lacks studies of the unemployed themselves. Yet, this is the crux of the matter - necessary to truly understand the consequences of unemployment then and now, so as to deal with it intelligently and efficiently. This book deals with what employment does to people. It answers important questions about the unemployed that are rarely asked. Who are they? Did they fail to earn a living even in prosperous times? What precipitated their unemployment? Do they prefer relief to work? Did unemployment bring about changes in how they think and feel? This is a volume of continuing relevance, and will be of interest to legislators, economists, social scientists, social workers, and psychologists.

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9780765805744

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Reviews

This book will satisfy a varied audience - the social scientist, the intellectually curious and those who are determined to erase the secourge of unemployment from our future national life. The frank and vivid case histories of some 200 families so ably woven by the author of this work into a patter of 'what unemployment does to people' points to the fact that war itself holds no greater threat to humanity than denial of the right to work. - Corrington Gill, former assistant administrator, Works Progress Administration

Author Information

Eli Ginzberg (1909-2002) was A. Barton Hepburn Professor Emeritus of Economics and director of the program on Conservation of Human resources at Columbia University. He is the author of more than eighty books (many published by Transaction)--all with a human resource policy impact.

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