The United States experienced a Great Depression during the 1930s causing one-quarter of its workforce to be unemployed. Although not formally recognized, a growing body of survey evidence indicates that the US has been experiencing a Second Great Depression for decades, worsened by events such as 9/11, the Great Recession, the growth of social media, and the COVID pandemic. However, the causes and consequences of this depression have been largely psychological, not economic, with a notable fraction of the population becoming socially disengaged and depressed. For example:
- The reported depression rate for adults reached a new high of 29% in 2023, up from 19.6% in 2015.
- Roughly half of Americans reported having three or fewer close friends in 2021, with a startling 12% reporting zero close friends. In 1990, the figures were 27% and 3%, respectively.
- The high rate of depression and lack of close friends are reflected in a notable decline in intimacy. For instance, 26% of Americans in 2021 reported not having sex during the past 12 months compared with 17.7% in 1990. The share of young men not having sex, 28%, has nearly tripled since 2008.
- Finally, isolation and drug use are on the rise as 27.6% of American households in 2020 were comprised of one person, up from 24.6% in 1990, and 16.5% of Americans age 12 and older in 2021 met the criteria for having a substance use disorder, up from 9.4% in 2002.
The upshot of this evidence is that commensurate with the magnitude of the harm of the 1930s Great Depression, it is plausible that one-quarter of the nation’s adults currently suffer from significant emotional and/or psychological trauma that limits their social engagement. Importantly, this share could rise because the Second Great Depression continues to be unaddressed.
The central figures during their respective depressions, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Donald Trump, have responded quite differently to the acute problems faced by one-quarter of the nation and to the broader impacts on the entire nation. FDR tried to end the Great Depression by increasing government spending on public projects to create jobs and by imploring Congress to pass regulations to better protect the public against risks to their health and safety. Although the policies had mixed results, it was clear that FDR was motivated by an imperative to fix the country’s structural problems.
In contrast, Trump has made few efforts to address the Second Great Depression. Instead, he has exploited its malaise to win two presidential elections by convincing an important share of the public to vote for him because he gives voice to their fears and anxieties and encourages them to join a movement of like-minded people. Indeed, a closer examination of the links provided above show that the Second Great Depression disproportionately afflicts men and younger and rural Americans—that is, people who form the bedrock of Trump’s political support.
Thus, although both FDR and likely Trump are distinguished among presidents during the past century as being at the center of American politics for more than a decade, their legacies during a time of crisis stand to be quite different. As a solutions-oriented leader, FDR casts a long, positive shadow over American history, while Trump’s disinterest in constructive solutions makes it highly unlikely that he will leave a similar imprint on the country.
Unfortunately, recent history has not yielded a leader from either party who can articulate the bold vision and thoughtful policy required to address the Second Great Depression. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton continued the trend among conventional politicians of largely ignoring the depressed share of the population. This bloc of voters was receptive to Donald Trump’s attacks on convenient scapegoats, such as migrants, immigrants, and minorities, and to his anger toward liberals and elites, which was aligned with their resentment over the states of their lives. Trump therefore exploited the Second Great Depression to get elected, but once in office, he made few efforts to help the depressed bloc of voters who helped to elect him.
Biden’s election in 2020 can be explained in part by Trump’s loss of support from his once loyal base along with a backlash by the broader population to his handling of the COVID pandemic, resulting in a record voter turnout. But while Biden’s administration focused almost exclusively on the considerable economic costs of the pandemic, it never came to terms with the fact that COVID exacerbated the psychological costs of the Second Great Depression. Thus, marked improvements in a broad spectrum of economic indicators during the last few years of the administration were met by at most modest improvements in Americans’ subjective views of the economy.
Trump was able to regain much of the support of the depressed bloc of voters by largely replicating his 2016 campaign strategy with renewed claims that the “usual suspects” were responsible for their discontent. At the same time, Kamala Harris’s attempts to mount a “joyful” campaign did not resonate with enough of the public because it conflicted with the Biden administration’s neglect of the psychological costs of the Second Great Depression. To be fair, Harris’s short campaign was stymied because effective policy solutions to this depression are difficult to formulate in a world that is intentionally engineered to limit people’s attention span, to silo sources of information, and to crowd out face-to-face engagement with other people. The growing adoption of AI technologies may exacerbate these difficulties.
The Second Great Depression continues to provide a challenge and an opportunity for a great leader, like FDR, to reshape society in a beneficial way and to leave a long and favorable legacy. We know this is not Donald Trump because he has failed to offer a constructive agenda to meet this challenge and is unlikely to change course. We do not know whether the next FDR is currently among us, but we are hopeful that someone from either political party will emerge soon.
