One of the most controversial public policy debates of the present decade involves entitlement programs for the poor. Many of these programs originated during the widespread poverty of the Great Depression. The authors reconstruct what consumers experienced during the Great Depression through a primary analysis of observations of consumer behavior, which are preserved in archival reports, and a secondary analysis of letters expressing the consumers’ plight that the consumers themselves authored and sent to various government officials. The four themes resulting from the analyses of these data are (1) consumption conditions, (2) labor as an expendable resource, (3) class and ethnic conflict, and (4) return to self-sufficient modes of production. The broader implications of these historic events for consumer researchers interested in current poverty issues and public policy are provided in the conclusion.
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