Social Policy in the 1920s

Abstract

Unemployment is the problem which dominates the history of interwar social policy. Comparison of very dubious unemployment date before 1914 with more abundant but still unsatisfactory interwar data has led historians to two different conclusions: that interwar unemployment was, except in the very depressed years 1921–22 and 1931–33, no worse on average than before 1914 [10, 614]; or alternatively, that even the lowest interwar rate of unemployment was higher than the highest pre-war rate [7, 443]. A more cautious, if discouraging, approach might indicate that the statistics are not good enough to sustain either comparison [39, 59]. Interwar governments, however, saw unemployment as a more pressing problem than it had been before 1914.