Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP85
Authors: Barry Eichengreen
Abstract: This paper reassesses the pattern of unemployment in interwar Britain from a microeconomic perspective. A 10 per cent sample of some 27,000 case record cards completed in 1929-31 as part of the New Survey of London Life and Labour is used as a basis for cross-section analysis of unemployment incidence among adult male wage earners. To provide a basis for comparison, these results for the interwar period are set against a comparable analysis for the postwar years using the General Household Survey for 1975. The findings indicate that unemployment was concentrated among certain segments of the labour force and suggest that a disproportionate burden was borne by the poor and disadvantaged, thus providing the first systematic support for those views of contemporary observers so often invoked by subsequent historians.
Keywords: interwar unemployment; Britain; cross-section analysis
JEL Codes: 824
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| socio-economic status (P36) | unemployment risk (J65) |
| age (J14) | unemployment risk (J65) |
| income level (D31) | unemployment risk (J65) |
| housing status (R21) | unemployment risk (J65) |
| number of income sources (E25) | unemployment risk (J65) |