The Great Depression

Unemployment grew to 12%, forming a new group demanding government assistance. The government set up an Unemployment Board and legislated to raise an annual levy of 30 shillings from every adult working male to fund the Board’s activities which became an important precedent for the social security tax.[i]

The effects of the Depression caused an apparent failure of voluntary welfare. By the mid-1930s even the leading churches were urging greater state activism and redistribution of wealth.[ii] Both private charity and the system of charitable aid proved insufficient, inefficient, and humiliating.[iii] This led to new public expectations of what the state should provide for citizens.[iv]


Footnotes

  1. [i] go to main content Margaret McClure, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand 1898–1998, Auckland, 1998, p. 49.
  2. [ii] go to main content Margaret Tennant, Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History, co-edited with Bronwyn Dalley, 2004, p. 49.
  3. [iii] go to main content McClure, Margaret, ‘A Badge of Poverty or a Symbol of Citizenship? Needs, Rights, and Social Security, 1935-2000’, in Bronwyn Dalley and Margaret Tennant, eds., Past Judgement, Dunedin, 2004, p. 143.; McClure, 1998, p. 57.
  4. [iv] go to main content McClure, 1998, p. 48.