What were the social changes in the Roaring Twenties?

[music0for0lyfe]

What were the social changes in the Roaring Twenties? What trends led to the Great Depression?

[augie6_1]

The 1920s have long been remembered as the "Roaring Twenties," an era of unprecedented affluence best remembered through the cultural artifacts generated by its new mass-consumption economy: a Ford Model T in every driveway, "Amos n' Andy" on the radio and the first "talking" motion pictures at the cinema, baseball hero Babe Ruth in the ballpark and celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh on the front page of every newspaper.

From Shmoop/The Roaring Twenties

[MrV]

The development of new forms of entertainment like the movies and radio. The automobile made people free to live further from their jobs. It influenced youth. The "term" for a car was "struggle buggy." Women smoked in public. Women's clothes were more risque. Women had new employment opportunities. The "flapper' was the example of the "in" girl or the "it" girl. Spectator sports increased. Youth had more money to spend. New form of music, jazz, gave the name to the decade. The Jazz Age.
There were several major causes of the Great Depression in the United States.
1. Unequal distribution of wealth. There was not a large middle class. While wages were rising for the majority of workers, they were not keeping pace with the increase in the cost of living or the wealth in the hands of the industrialists and others in the upper income classes.
2. There was over speculation in the Stock Market, which was not regulated.
Many Americans purchased stock on credit. This was known as margin buying.
3. Increased manufacturing and agricultural output, but wages that did not keep pace for the consumers to purchase all that was produced or grown. Hence, inventories increased and agricultural income remained low.
4. Buying on credit, known in the 1920s as installment buying. People purchased things like refrigerators on time, and did not have money to pay for the product in the future, when the bills became due.