The 1930s
Were the Neediest Helped?

In July 1935 the Children's Minimum Council approached the Prime Minister to complain about the inadequacy of unemployment scales. He replied that revision was unnecessary because many social services were available to the needy. Recent academic reassessments of the interwar period have also emphasised the role of cash benefits and welfare services in protecting the unemployed against the adverse effects of the Depression. These benefits and services, it is argued, explain the steady improvement in health suggested by the aggregate mortality indices.

In previous work CEPR Research Fellow Charles Webster demonstrated that a closer analysis of aggregate data, as well as reference to local investigations, provides a much less favourable impression of mortality and morbidity in areas affected by high unemployment or low wages. In a paper presented to the February CEPR workshop on Health and Unemployment, and now available as Discussion Paper No. 48, he analyzes the impact of unemployment insurance and welfare services on families most in need. Webster uses hitherto neglected data, derived from unpublished confidential reports sponsored by the Board of Education and Ministry of Health. These reports confirm the growing concern in official circles over health in the "Special Areas', which either deteriorated of failed to show the same improvements taking place in more prosperous regions.

The long-term unemployed comprised about one million individuals, with some three million dependants. Webster argues that changes in benefit rules placed this group at a serious disadvantage compared with the short-term unemployed. Operation of the means test tended to erode or cancel out the value of other welfare services, such as school meals. Unemployment benefit, even at its most generous, was insufficient to meet the minimum dietary requirements specified during that period.

Webster examines details concerning the local operation of the school meals service, as well as maternity and child welfare schemes for supplementary nutrition. These local details illustrate factors which tended to reduce the effectiveness of welfare services in areas of high unemployment. Webster concludes that the population in the greatest need was furnished with the most inadequate welfare provision.


Health, Welfare and Unemployment During the Depression
Charles Webster

Discussion Paper No. 48, February 1985 (HR)