The Great Depression: Contraction, Households & Policy Responses — Practice · Grade 11 Social Studies

Chapter: The 1920s, Depression & New Deal

What this practice covers

By the end of The Great Depression: Contraction, Households & Policy Responses you should be able to:

6 questions, written answer, each with a worked explanation.

Vocabulary used: context, evidence, interpretation, contraction, bank run.

Problem 1

How did different financial problems reach households through different pathways?
Answer and explanation

A depositor losing access to savings, an employer losing credit, and a farmer facing falling prices experience different mechanisms. Explain their connections rather than using one stock-market event as the whole causal account. International trade and monetary constraints extended the contraction beyond domestic financial markets.

Problem 2

Why could falling prices coexist with declining purchasing capacity?
Answer and explanation

A decrease in nominal prices is not automatically a gain when wages or employment fall and fixed debts remain. Measure income, prices, and obligations together. A cheaper basket of goods may still be unaffordable to a household that has lost its earnings.

Problem 3

Why does the Dust Bowl not explain all national unemployment?
Answer and explanation

Drought and soil practices affected agricultural regions unevenly and interacted with economic distress. The Dust Bowl was not the single cause of national unemployment. Compare environmental, market, landholding, and migration evidence to explain a particular community’s trajectory without assuming every displaced family followed the same route.

Problem 4

How should loan, banking, relief, and work measures be compared?
Answer and explanation

Compare a loan program, emergency bank action, direct relief, and work employment as different responses. Recovery indicators varied over time, including the 1937–1938 downturn. Later wartime mobilization changed conditions again; a policy’s contribution should be assessed through a mechanism and evidence rather than a single completion date.

Problem 5

Teaching scenario: a bank closes, families lose access to savings, local purchases fall, and shops reduce staff. Other banks and public relief are not described. Explain the mechanism connecting the bank closure to employment and identify evidence needed to establish its size or wider reach.
Answer and explanation

The sequence supplies a plausible reinforcing contraction. It does not establish that every closure produced the same outcome or that one bank caused a national depression. Local sales and employment records could test the proposed chain.

Lost access to funds can reduce household spending.

Lower sales can lead shops to reduce work and wages.

Compare timing, alternative credit, relief, and records from other places.

Response criteria

  • Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
  • Connect relevant evidence to an explained conclusion.
  • Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
  • Identify an evidentiary limitation or a distinction that qualifies the claim.

Problem 6

Can lower prices coexist with worse household purchasing capacity during a depression?
Answer and explanation

Yes. Lost jobs or reduced wages can exceed the benefit of lower prices, while fixed debts remain burdensome. Compare the same household’s income, prices, and obligations over time. Deflation is not automatically improved living standards and should not be judged from one price alone.

Response criteria

  • Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
  • Connect relevant evidence to an explained conclusion.
  • Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
  • Identify an evidentiary limitation or a distinction that qualifies the claim.

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