Causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash

Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 · Paper 1 Section B, Depth Study D Syllabus: 2027 and 2028 Depth study D: The United States, 1919 to 1941 Key Question 3 of four

This is the Key Question that runs from the stock market at its peak to the day Roosevelt takes office. It has two halves joined by the word "and": the causes of the Wall Street Crash, and the consequences of it. Cambridge sets both, and it sets them separately, so you have to be able to argue either without wandering into the other.

This file covers all four focus points: whether speculation was responsible for the Crash, what the Crash did to the economy, what it did to society, and why Roosevelt won in 1932. It also covers President Hoover's reaction, which the specified content names but no focus point does, and which turns out to be the single most heavily examined thing in the whole Key Question. It stops where Roosevelt's programme begins.

One warning belongs at the very top, because it is the mistake that costs the most marks here and it is a mistake of understanding, not of memory. The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression are not the same event, and Cambridge examines the join between them as an argument in its own right. Section 3 deals with it before anything else.

1. What the syllabus actually asks

This is the wording printed in the Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028, on the Depth study D page. Learn the Key Question itself, because examiners build 10 mark questions straight out of it.

Key Question 3

What were the causes and consequences of the Wall Street Crash?

Focus points

• How far was speculation responsible for the Wall Street Crash?
• What impact did the Crash have on the economy?
• What were the social consequences of the Crash?
• Why did Roosevelt win the election of 1932?

The specified content is printed once, and it is not divided

Here is the thing that catches people out. For the Core Content, Cambridge prints specified content underneath each Key Question. For a Depth Study it does not. It prints one list for the whole of Depth study D, on the page after the four Key Questions, and it never says which bullet belongs to which one.

This is the whole list, verbatim, undivided:

- The expansion of the US economy during the 1920s:
- government policies
- mass production in industries for cars and other consumer goods
- the fortunes of older industries
- the development of credit and hire purchase
- the decline of agriculture
- Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s
- Society in the 1920s:
- the 'Roaring Twenties'
- film and other media
- Prohibition and gangsterism
- restrictions on immigration, the 'Red Scare', religious intolerance
- discrimination against Black Americans
- the Ku Klux Klan
- the changing roles of women
- The Wall Street Crash and its financial, economic and social effects
- The reaction of President Hoover to the Crash
- The presidential election of 1932; Hoover's and Roosevelt's programmes
- Roosevelt's inauguration and the 'Hundred Days'
- The New Deal legislation, the 'alphabet agencies' and their work, and the economic and social changes they caused
- Opposition to the New Deal:
- the Republicans
- the rich
- business interests
- the Supreme Court
- radical critics like Huey Long
- The strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal programme in dealing with unemployment and the Depression

Three of those bullets are yours outright:

• The Wall Street Crash and its financial, economic and social effects
• The reaction of President Hoover to the Crash
• The presidential election of 1932; Hoover's and Roosevelt's programmes

One is shared, and the sharing is real rather than tidy:

• Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s

Everything else on the list belongs to another Key Question in this Depth Study. Note also the wording problem: the syllabus says specified content "provides guidance on what needs to be studied for each key question", and then for the Depth Studies declines to divide it by key question. Do not try to force the division. Learn the whole list and know which arguments each part feeds.

The line with Key Question 1, and the line with Key Question 4

Two boundaries have to be drawn or you will write the wrong essay.

Key Question 1, "How far did the US economy boom in the 1920s?", owns the boom, including the weaknesses beneath it: overproduction, the decline of agriculture, the fortunes of older industries, the unequal distribution of income, the tariff problem. Those weaknesses are also the strongest cause you can offer for the Crash, so the material genuinely sits in two places at once. See d1-how-far-did-the-us-economy-boom-in-the-1920s.md for the boom itself.

The line to hold is this. In Key Question 1 the weaknesses are the subject: how prosperous was the 1920s really, and for whom. In Key Question 3 the same weaknesses are evidence in an argument: were they, rather than speculation, what brought the market down and the economy with it. Same facts, different job. If you find yourself explaining what a combine harvester did to wheat prices without ever getting to 1929, you have written the Key Question 1 essay.

Cambridge itself blurs this on the paper, which is the proof that the overlap is real rather than invented. In June 2024, one paper set part (a) on buying "on the margin" and part (c) on the 1932 election, both squarely Key Question 3, with part (b) sitting between them asking "Why did the US economy have underlying weaknesses in the 1920s?" One question, two Key Questions.

Key Question 4, "How successful was the New Deal?", owns the response. Roosevelt's inauguration, the Hundred Days, the Emergency Banking Act, the alphabet agencies, the opposition: none of it is yours. See d4-how-successful-was-the-new-deal.md. Your material ends with the votes counted in November 1932. Roosevelt's campaign and his promises are yours, because the specified content puts "Hoover's and Roosevelt's programmes" beside the election. What he actually did with power is not.

2. How Paper 1 marks this Key Question

The mark ladders are the same for every question on this paper, and they are set out in full in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes: the three parts and their marks, the assessment objective split, and the two rules Cambridge changed for the 2024 series. Read that page once, early. Nothing below repeats it, and everything below assumes it.

3. The Crash is not the Depression

Examiners see this collapsed into one event every series, and Cambridge's own mark schemes are built to punish the collapse and reward the distinction. Get it right and several 10 mark questions become straightforward.

The Wall Street Crash is an event on the New York stock market in October 1929. It lasted days. It destroyed the value of shares.

The Great Depression is a condition of the whole American economy through the 1930s: mass unemployment, bank failure, collapsed demand, homelessness, ruined farms. It lasted years.

They are connected, but not in one step, and Cambridge writes the connection out as a chain. Here is the route the mark schemes describe, from the market to the factory gate:

1. speculators borrow from banks to buy shares
2. share prices rise beyond what companies are worth
3. confidence breaks and everyone sells at once
4. shares become worthless and speculators cannot repay the loans
5. banks lose the money and savers rush to withdraw what is left
6. banks close, so businesses cannot borrow and existing loans are called in
7. businesses cut production and sack workers
8. the sacked workers stop buying
9. demand falls further and more workers are sacked

Notice that the Crash is only the first two or three links. Everything after "banks close" is the Depression, and each link is a place where the chain could in principle have been broken.

Now the second half of the point, and it is the harder one. Cambridge repeatedly sets questions arguing that the Crash was not the cause of the Depression at all. Its own top band answer for June 2024 says the underlying weaknesses "were the real cause of the Depression" and that the Crash "had the impact it did because it came at a time when long-term weaknesses in the economy were coming to a head". The Crash on this reading is a trigger meeting a loaded gun, not the gun.

So there are three defensible positions, and a Level 5 answer picks one and says why:

Cambridge will accept all three when explained. What it will not accept is a candidate who uses "Crash" and "Depression" as interchangeable words, because such an answer cannot address a question like "How far did the Wall Street Crash cause the Depression?" at all.

4. Focus point: how far was speculation responsible for the Wall Street Crash?

This is the commonest 10 mark question in the whole Key Question, and it is nearly always set as a two-sided comparison: speculation on one side, long-term weaknesses in the economy on the other. Cambridge has set it as "The Wall Street Crash was caused by speculation", as "It was long-term weaknesses in the American economy that led to the Wall Street Crash", as "It was the banks that caused the Wall Street Crash", as "How far do you agree that overproduction caused the Wall Street Crash?", and as the straight choice "Which was more responsible for the Wall Street Crash: speculation or long-term weaknesses in the economy?"

Because the same argument keeps being re-cut, you need both sides properly stocked.

The case that speculation was responsible

A speculator is not an investor. Cambridge's own wording is unusually sharp about this, and examiner reports say the weakest answers show no sign of knowing what the word means. A speculator buys shares with no interest in the company and no intention of keeping them. The only plan is to sell to somebody else at a higher price.

The mechanism that made it dangerous was buying "on the margin". Cambridge describes it as putting down about 10 per cent of the price in cash and borrowing the rest, with banks lending up to 90 per cent of the share price. That works while prices rise. It is fatal the moment they fall, because the debt does not fall with them.

Cambridge prints two figures here in more than one document, which makes them safe to use. In 1929 banks had lent speculators $9 billion, and by 1929 there were more than 20 million shareholders in a population Cambridge gives as 120 million.

1. banks lend freely and cheaply
2. ordinary people with no experience buy shares on the margin
3. demand for shares pushes prices above what the companies are worth
4. the rise is now built on borrowed money rather than on profits
5. any fall wipes out the borrower and the lender together

The 10 mark version of this side ends by saying the banks and the speculators together built a structure that could only survive if prices never fell, which is not a condition any market can meet.

The case that long-term weaknesses were responsible

The other side says the market only fell because the real economy underneath it had already begun to fail, and that speculators sold in 1929 because they had started to notice.

The weaknesses Cambridge names, drawing on the "Weaknesses in the economy by the late 1920s" bullet:

• Overproduction. Factories and farms were producing more than could be sold. Consumer industries had saturated their market because everybody who could afford a car or a fridge had bought one.
• Unequal distribution of income. Cambridge gives this several ways and they do not quite agree, so section 13 handles the numbers. The point is constant: a large minority or bare majority of Americans could not afford consumer goods at all.
• Older industries already in decline. Coal, textiles, leather and shoemaking were losing to oil, gas and synthetic fibres such as rayon.
• Agriculture already depressed through the whole decade, with overproduction and falling prices.
• Lost export markets. Europe could not afford American goods and set tariffs against them in reply to American tariffs.
• Banks already failing. Cambridge says banks were failing at a rate of about 500 a year in the run-up to the Crash, in both a Paper 1 and a Paper 4 mark scheme.

That last one is worth pausing on. If banks were already collapsing in hundreds before October 1929, then the banking system did not fail because of the Crash. It failed faster because of it.

1. demand for consumer goods stops growing
2. company profits fall in 1927 and 1928
3. shareholders who watch profits start to sell
4. the selling spreads to speculators who were watching only prices
5. panic

Deciding between them

The strongest judgements do not pick a side and ignore the other. They connect them. Cambridge's own top band wording gives you the shape: the two are not rivals, because speculation is what made the economy's weaknesses lethal rather than merely bad. Overproduction on its own produces a recession. Overproduction plus $9 billion of borrowed money staked on prices never falling produces a collapse of the banking system.

5. What actually happened on Wall Street in October 1929

Cambridge sets this as a 4 mark question in its own right, so you need the named days.

• Black Thursday, 24 October 1929. Prices fell sharply, people panicked, and there was a scramble to sell. So many sales were made that the ticker tape machines reporting prices broke down. By the end of the day the slide was halted by bankers buying large blocks of shares.
• Black Tuesday, 29 October 1929. Prices fell further still.
• Cambridge adds that share prices continued to fall for three years after the Crash, which is the fact that turns an event into an era.

For how far prices fell on Black Thursday, Cambridge prints two different figures in two different mark schemes. Section 13 sets them side by side. Do not try to make them agree.

For a 4 mark answer, four separate points and stop: the date, the panic selling, the failure of the ticker tape, the bankers' intervention. That is full marks in four lines.

6. Focus point: what impact did the Crash have on the economy?

This is the focus point Cambridge most often sets as a 6 mark "why" question rather than as a 10 mark argument, and the wording repeats almost verbatim across series: "Why did the Wall Street Crash lead to unemployment?" has been set at least three times.

The chain matters more than the list, because a list is a Level 2 answer however long it is.

1. the Crash destroys confidence
2. savers withdraw their money, which is a run on the banks
3. banks close, or survive only by calling in the loans they have already made
4. businesses lose their credit and cannot pay back what they owe
5. businesses cut production, cut wages and sack workers
6. those workers stop buying
7. demand falls again and more businesses fail

Cambridge calls this "a vicious cycle" and "a downward spiral" in its own mark schemes, and the phrase is worth using, because it names the thing that makes a Depression different from a recession: each consequence becomes a fresh cause.

The economic consequences Cambridge names:

• Bank failure, on a scale it gives more than one way. Section 13.
• Loss of savings. People who had never bought a share lost everything the bank held for them, which is why the Crash reached households that had nothing to do with Wall Street.
• Business bankruptcy and cut production.
• Unemployment. In 1929 Cambridge puts it at 1.6 million; by 1933 at 14 million, which it describes as a quarter of the workforce.
• Collapse in output. By 1933 the economy was producing only 20 per cent of what it had produced in 1929.
• Collapse in trade. Cambridge gives a fall from $10 billion in 1929 to $3 billion in 1932, describing that figure as international trade in one mark scheme and as US exports in another.
• Farm prices collapse further, because unemployed townspeople could not buy food. Cambridge's own example is that it could cost a farmer more to take an animal to market than he could sell it for.

Note the reach. A question on the economic impact of the Crash is not answered by talking about the stock market. It is answered by tracing how a fall in share prices reached a farm in Oklahoma and a steelworker in Cleveland.

7. Focus point: what were the social consequences of the Crash?

This is the focus point Cambridge least often sets at 10 marks and most often uses to supply 4 mark questions, which makes it a cheap source of marks that candidates underprepare.

The recurring 4 mark topics

Hoovervilles. Shanty towns on the edge of cities, built to house people made homeless. Cambridge's own descriptions: shacks built from old crates and cardboard, most of them a single room, no running water and no sewage system, unsanitary and unhealthy, sometimes with a small stove for warmth and cooking. Residents begged or went to the nearest soup kitchen. You never knew when the local authorities would come and pull or burn your shack down. In some Hoovervilles the inhabitants elected their own officials to keep order and keep the area clean. They were named after President Hoover, which is the political point hiding inside a social fact.

The Bonus Marchers, or Bonus Army, 1932. Ex-servicemen of the First World War who had been promised a bonus payment of $500 which was not payable until 1945. Cambridge says 25,000 destitute veterans marched on Washington in 1932 to ask for it early. They camped peacefully outside the White House. Congress voted against paying the bonus early. Hoover refused to meet them and regarded them as a revolutionary threat, then decided they had to be evicted, and asked General MacArthur and the army to clear the camps. Tanks, machine guns and tear gas were used, and the tents and shelters were burnt. Two veterans were killed and nearly a thousand were injured. Cambridge adds that Hoover failed to keep control of MacArthur's actions, and that he publicly thanked God that the USA still knew how to deal with a mob.

The Dust Bowl. Land over-farmed until it lost its fertility, then years of hot summers and driving wind that turned the topsoil to dust. Cambridge says that by 1936 large parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado had become like a desert. Dust storms destroyed the land, animals were killed and crops lost, and farmers had to move away, many to California.

The 'Okies'. Migrants from Oklahoma, made poor by the Dust Bowl, fleeing the Great Plains for California to look for work as farm labourers, living in shanty towns on large Californian farms.

The argument underneath the facts

Cambridge has set the 10 mark version as a comparison between places rather than between causes: "The impact of the Depression was worse in the countryside than in towns and cities." It has also set the comparison between kinds of suffering: "the most serious consequence of the Depression was the rise in unemployment", against which the banking crisis is the alternative.

For countryside against town, Cambridge's own two sides run like this. In the countryside, food prices collapsed, farmers could not pay their mortgages and were evicted, families were left homeless with nothing to feed children, and then the Dust Bowl removed the possibility of farming at all. In the towns, factories closed, cities with a single industry were devastated (Cambridge names Cleveland, the steel city, where 50 per cent of workers were unemployed), people could not pay rent, parks filled with the homeless, and thousands ended up in shanty towns searching rubbish tips for food.

That is a genuinely balanced question, which is exactly why it is set. Do not answer it with a list of miseries. Answer it by choosing a standard of comparison and saying what it is: numbers affected, depth of suffering, or the chance of recovery.

8. Hoover's reaction, which the focus points do not mention and the papers examine constantly

This is the most important structural fact about this Key Question, and you would never guess it from the four focus points, none of which contains the word Hoover.

The specified content does: "The reaction of President Hoover to the Crash." And Hoover is, by a wide margin, the most heavily examined single topic in Key Question 3. Across the papers read, questions about what Hoover did, why he did so little, whether he deserved the label, and whether he was to blame for the Depression's severity appear more often than questions about speculation.

You therefore need both sides of Hoover, because the 10 mark question is always the same argument in different words: "Hoover did much to help the American people during the Depression", "Hoover did not deserve to be regarded as the 'do nothing' President", "Hoover did little to deal with the Depression", "How surprised are you that Hoover was known as the 'do nothing' President?"

What Hoover actually did, in Cambridge's own list

• Tax cuts. Cambridge gives these as $130 million in 1930, in both a Paper 1 and a Paper 4 mark scheme.
• The Hawley-Smoot tariff, 1930, raising customs duties on imported goods and food to protect American industry.
• The Federal Farm Board, buying surplus farm produce to hold prices up.
• The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1932, providing loans to businesses and to banks. Cambridge puts the loans at over $1,500 million.
• Public works. Cambridge gives $423 million for schemes such as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, to create jobs.
• Persuasion rather than law: encouraging employers not to cut wages and not to sack workers, and making voluntary agreements with them.
• Soup kitchens, which Cambridge notes helped only a small number of people.
• Cambridge also names an Emergency Relief and Reconstruction Act giving money to the unemployed.

That is not nothing, and any answer that says Hoover did nothing is factually wrong as well as one-sided.

Why it was not enough, and why he became hated

• He believed in 'rugged individualism' and self-help: people should support themselves and their families, and government help would make them less self-reliant.
• He believed in laissez-faire: business should be left alone and would recover by itself.
• He believed welfare was the job of charities and local government, not the federal government.
• He read the early Depression as a normal business downturn in a cycle of boom and bust, and said prosperity was just around the corner.
• His measures were, in the phrase Cambridge uses again and again, too little and too late.
• The tariff made things worse, not better, by shrinking trade further.
• The Bonus Marchers finished him. A president who set the army on unemployed war veterans could not credibly claim to care.

1. Hoover believes the downturn is normal and temporary
2. he acts late and modestly, and mostly by persuasion
3. the Depression deepens anyway
4. the modest measures now look like indifference rather than restraint
5. the Bonus Army eviction confirms the impression
6. Hoover becomes the man the shanty towns are named after

Which side to come down on

Cambridge's balanced position, visible in its own exemplars, is that Hoover did more than his reputation allows but far less than the crisis required, and that the gap between the two is what destroyed him. That is a judgement, and it answers "how far". "There are arguments on both sides" is not.

There is also a defence Cambridge explicitly credits and candidates rarely use: the problem was overwhelming and no president could have fixed it quickly. If you are running short of material for the second side, that is the one to reach for.

9. Focus point: why did Roosevelt win the election of 1932?

Cambridge frames this two ways and you must notice which one you have been given, because they need different essays.

• "Why did Roosevelt win?" invites you to write about Roosevelt.
• "Which was more responsible for the result: Hoover or Roosevelt?" or "Hoover's failings influenced the result more than Roosevelt's strengths" requires both, and an answer only about Roosevelt is capped.

Cambridge has set the second form at least four times, which makes it the likelier of the two.

The Roosevelt side

• He travelled the country during the campaign, meeting ordinary people, so that voters felt they knew him.
• He was a good public speaker, warm, open and optimistic.
• He promised a 'New Deal' for the American people, which gave the poor hope of jobs and reassured the middle classes who feared the country might slide into revolution.
• He promised government schemes to create jobs, measures to revive industry and agriculture, relief for the poor and unemployed, protection for savings and property.
• He promised to get rid of Prohibition.
• He had a record: his work for the poor as Governor of New York State.
• He was admired for the way he fought polio.
• His campaign song was 'Happy Days Are Here Again'.
• Crucially, he could not be blamed for the Depression, having had no part in the policies that produced it.

The Hoover side

Everything in section 8, restated as an electoral fact rather than a policy one. Cambridge's Level 2 list is blunt: Hoover had no new ideas, gave the impression he did not care, appeared grim-faced, thought the Depression was a temporary downturn, did too little too late, and had the Bonus Army cleared away with violence.

The result and the judgement

Cambridge records that Roosevelt won a landslide and gave the Republicans the worst defeat they had ever suffered. Note also, from a Paper 4 stem, that he was elected in 1932 and became President in 1933. Do not merge the two years.

The judgement Cambridge's own top band models is that Hoover lost the election rather than Roosevelt winning it, with the reasoning attached: the Depression was so bad and Hoover had done so little that it would have been difficult for Roosevelt to lose. But it also models the reverse, that Roosevelt's optimism only looked so powerful because it was set against Hoover's manner. Either wins the tenth mark if the reason is stated.

10. What the papers actually ask

The slot

Section B begins at Question 9 and gives each Depth Study two consecutive questions in syllabus order, so Depth Study D is Question 15 and Question 16. That held in every one of the 48 Paper 1 mark schemes read from 2018 to 2024, including the 2018 to 2023 papers that ran to Question 22 with seven Depth Studies, and the 2024 papers that stop at Question 18 with five. The two withdrawals and one addition happened after Depth Study D, so its numbering never moved.

Within Depth Study D, Cambridge does not tie a Key Question to a slot, but this Key Question has a strong habit.

So Key Question 3 is a whole question on exactly half the papers, and when it is set it is at Question 16 about nine times in ten. The two exceptions are real and recent enough to matter: June 2018 and June 2024 both put it at Question 15. Do not walk in expecting it at 16.

The other half of the pattern is worth knowing too. When Question 16 is not Key Question 3 it is almost always Key Question 4, the New Deal. Question 15 is almost always Key Question 1 or Key Question 2. Practically, Question 15 is the 1920s and Question 16 is the 1930s, and your Key Question sits on the hinge.

Causes or consequences? The paper splits by part

The two halves of this Key Question are not examined equally, and they are not examined equally at each mark value. Across the 24 full Key Question 3 questions:

That is the single most useful thing on this page. The 10 mark question is usually about causes; the 6 mark question is usually about consequences. If you prepare only causes you will meet a 6 mark question you cannot explain. If you prepare only consequences you will meet the 10 mark question with one side.

The families, in Cambridge's own words

4 mark families. What was buying 'on the margin'? What was a Hooverville? What was the Bonus March, and what happened to the Bonus Marchers? What happened on Wall Street in October 1929? What was 'Black Thursday', 24 October 1929? What was the Banking Crisis of the early 1930s? What was the Dust Bowl? Who were the 'Okies'? Describe what Hoover did. Describe Roosevelt's 1932 campaign. Describe the actions of speculators prior to the crash.

6 mark families. Why did the Wall Street Crash lead to unemployment? Why did many people face unemployment after the Wall Street Crash? Why did Wall Street crash in October 1929? Why did 'buying on the margin' contribute to the Wall Street Crash? Why were speculators blamed for the Wall Street Crash? Why did overproduction contribute to the problems facing the American economy? Why did Hoover do little to help people during the Depression? Why did many people blame Hoover for the hardship caused by the Depression? Why did the Bonus Marchers cause damage to Hoover's reputation? Why was Roosevelt able to win over many voters during his 1932 election campaign? Why did agricultural areas suffer badly?

10 mark families. The Crash was caused by speculation. It was long-term weaknesses that led to the Crash. It was the banks that caused the Crash. Overproduction caused the Crash. Which was more responsible, speculation or long-term weaknesses? How surprising was the Wall Street Crash? How far did the Wall Street Crash cause the Depression? Underlying weaknesses rather than the Crash caused the Depression. The main impact of the Crash was the collapse of the banks. The most serious consequence of the Depression was unemployment. The impact of the Depression was worse in the countryside than in towns. Hoover did much to help. Hoover did not deserve to be called the 'do nothing' President. Hoover's failure is why the Depression hit people so hard. Hoover's failings mattered more than Roosevelt's strengths. Roosevelt won because he gave Americans hope.

Paper 4 sets this Key Question too

If your school enters you for Paper 4, the Alternative to Coursework, rather than coursework, Depth Study D is examined there at Questions 7 and 8, and the format changed for 2024 from one 40 mark essay to (a) 15 marks, "Write an account of", plus (b) 25 marks, "Discuss the importance of". Key Question 3 has appeared there as "How significant was financial speculation as a cause of the Wall Street Crash in 1929?", "How significant was homelessness in the impact of the Depression after 1929?", "How significant was his election campaign as a reason for Roosevelt becoming President in 1933?", "Write an account of the measures taken by Hoover to deal with the effects of the Depression", "Discuss the importance of the Bonus Marchers", "Write an account of how speculation on the stock market developed during the 1920s", "Discuss the impact of the Wall Street Crash on the United States", and "Write an account of the problems facing American banks as a result of the Great Depression".

Paper 2 never examines a Depth Study. Its prescribed topic always comes from Core Content, so nothing on this page is ever a source question.

11. Judgement sentences for this question

Level 5 is Level 4 plus a supported judgement: a sentence that answers the exact question asked and attaches a reason. These are shaped for this Key Question and each one takes a position.

• "Speculation mattered more than the underlying weaknesses, because a weak economy produces a recession, and only borrowed money staked on rising prices produces a collapse of the banks."
• "The weaknesses mattered more, because the Crash struck an economy that had already stopped growing, and a healthy economy absorbs a fall in share prices without twenty-five per cent unemployment."
• "The Crash did not cause the Depression so much as reveal it, because every weakness that deepened the Depression was already present before October 1929."
• "The collapse of the banks was the most important impact, because it was the link that carried the Crash out of Wall Street and into towns where nobody owned a share."
• "Hoover did more than his reputation allows and far less than the crisis demanded, and it was the gap between the two, not the doing of nothing, that destroyed him."
• "Hoover lost the election rather than Roosevelt winning it, because the Depression made the incumbent unelectable before Roosevelt opened his campaign."
• "Unemployment was the most serious consequence because it caused most of the others, including the homelessness and the collapse in demand that made recovery slower."

12. What examiner reports say candidates get wrong here

The general faults, such as overwriting part (a) or listing instead of explaining, are in the How Cambridge marks History 0470 Paper 1 notes. These are the ones the reports raise about this content specifically.

• Not knowing what a speculator is. In one series the report says that in the least successful responses "there was no evidence that the term 'speculator' was understood". The whole first focus point is unanswerable without it.
• Describing the Crash instead of answering about it. Asked for the consequences of the Crash for individual investors, candidates wrote about the consequences generally, or described the Crash in detail. Asked why speculators were blamed, weaker answers gave "general descriptions of the events of the Wall Street Crash".
• Answering about the wrong decade. Asked about the US economy in 1919, candidates wrote about the mid-1920s and about the period after the Crash. This Key Question sits between two others in the same Depth Study and it is easy to drift into either.
• One-sided Hoover answers. Reports name this directly: "very often the focus was on Hoover's failures to deal with the Depression at the expense of points which argued that Hoover was not entirely to blame". A one-sided part (c) is capped at 6 however good it is, and the second side here is easy: his actual measures, and the scale of the problem.
• Inventing a false balance. On a question about whether Hoover did much to help, one report records candidates assuming that "to produce a balanced answer, a comparison of the actions of Hoover and Roosevelt" had to be made. It did not. The two sides of that question are both about Hoover.
• Describing rather than explaining impact. On a question about why agricultural areas suffered, the report says answers "could have been improved by explaining impact, such as why farmers faced evictions".
• Generalised narrative on consequences. On the "most serious consequence" question, responses "tended to be generalised narratives about unemployment, social distress and the banking crisis". A narrative of three consequences is not a judgement between them.

One further point about examiner reports themselves. Question 13 upward often draws the line "There were too few responses to these questions for meaningful comments to be made", but Depth Study D is usually above that line, not below it. Across the 18 reports read, the cut-off most often falls at Question 16 or Question 17, meaning Question 15 nearly always gets comment and Question 16 sometimes does not. In a handful of series, mostly the March papers, the silence reaches down to Question 13 and takes Depth Study D with it. Since Key Question 3 usually sits at Question 16, it is the more frequently silent of this Depth Study's two slots. Where the reports do comment, they are worth more than any textbook.

13. Where Cambridge's own numbers disagree

Cambridge prints several of the key figures for this Key Question more than one way. These are not errors you should resolve. They are the reason to avoid staking an argument on a single number.

How far shares fell on Black Thursday. One mark scheme says "The stock market lost 11% of its value". Another says "Share prices lost over 20% of their value on Black Thursday". Both are Cambridge, both are Paper 1, four years apart. Say "sharply", or quote a figure and attribute it to the year you took it from.

How many banks failed. Cambridge gives, in different documents: "Over 11 000 banks stopped trading"; "Between 1929 and 1931, 4500 banks collapsed"; "Over 4000 banks went bankrupt"; "over 5000 banks closed"; "659 banks failed in 1929 alone"; and "about 500 each year" before the Crash. These are probably measuring different things over different periods, but Cambridge does not say which, so the safe move is to describe the scale rather than assert a total.

What the $10 billion to $3 billion figure measures. One mark scheme calls the fall from $10 billion in 1929 to $3 billion in 1932 "international trade". Another calls the same figures "US exports". Use it, name it as trade, and do not build a point on the distinction.

How many Americans were too poor to buy consumer goods. Cambridge gives "50 to 60 per cent of the population", "50 to 60 per cent of Americans earned less than $2000 a year", "probably about 50 per cent of the population", "as many as 60 per cent of Americans still lived in poverty" and "50 per cent could not afford consumer goods". These are broadly consistent, but the exact share is not fixed. Say "around half".

The rule for all four: examiners award the fifth mark on part (b) for "explanation supported by specific contextual knowledge", and a figure earns that mark by sitting inside an explanation. It does not earn anything by being exact to a decimal place, and nothing is lost by writing "over four thousand banks" rather than picking one of Cambridge's five totals.

14. Quick revision

• The Key Question has two halves. The papers set them at different weights: the 10 mark question is usually causes, the 6 mark question is usually consequences.
• Depth Study D is Questions 15 and 16. This Key Question is a whole question on half the papers, and it sits at Question 16 about nine times in ten, with two recent exceptions at Question 15.
• The Crash is not the Depression. The Crash is days in October 1929. The Depression is the 1930s. The chain between them runs through the banks, and Cambridge sets questions arguing the Crash was not the real cause at all.
• Black Thursday, 24 October 1929. Black Tuesday, 29 October 1929. Prices kept falling for three years.
• Speculation: shares bought only to resell, on the margin, with about 10 per cent down and banks lending up to 90 per cent. $9 billion lent to speculators in 1929, more than 20 million shareholders.
• Weaknesses: overproduction, unequal income, older industries and agriculture already failing, lost export markets, and banks already failing at about 500 a year.
• Economic consequences: bank failure, lost savings, business collapse, unemployment from 1.6 million in 1929 to 14 million in 1933, output down to 20 per cent of 1929, trade down from $10 billion to $3 billion.
• Social consequences: Hoovervilles, the Bonus Marchers, the Dust Bowl, the 'Okies'. Cleveland at 50 per cent unemployed.
• Hoover is not in any focus point and is in the specified content, and he is the most examined topic here. Know both sides: tax cuts of $130 million, Hawley-Smoot 1930, the Federal Farm Board, the RFC in 1932 lending over $1,500 million, $423 million of public works including the Hoover Dam; against rugged individualism, laissez-faire, too little and too late, and the Bonus Army.
• The 1932 election is usually set as Hoover against Roosevelt, not Roosevelt alone. Elected 1932, President 1933, a landslide.
• Never let a (c) answer be one-sided. One explanation on each side is 7. The tenth mark is a stated judgement with a reason.

Where these facts come from

Everything above is taken from Cambridge's own documents, and each claim can be checked against a named one.

The Cambridge IGCSE History 0470 syllabus for 2027 and 2028. The Key Question, the four focus points, the whole specified content list for Depth study D, the fact that it is printed once and undivided, the five Depth Studies and their order, and the definitions of key questions, focus points and specified content.

Paper 1 mark schemes, 2018 to 2024, all 48 read. Every question stem quoted in section 10, the slot counts, the causes-against-consequences split by part, and every figure, name and date in sections 4 to 9. The conflicting figures in section 13 come from setting two mark schemes side by side rather than from trusting either.

Paper 4 mark schemes. The Question 7 and 8 placement, the 2024 format change, the Paper 4 stems in section 10, and the trade, bank and speculation figures where noted.

Principal Examiner reports, 2018 to 2024, all 18 read. Section 12 entirely, including the direct quotations, and the observation about where the "too few responses" line falls for this Depth Study.

Deliberately not asserted here, because Cambridge does not print them in the documents read and a plausible-looking invented number is worse than an absent one:

• any stock market index level, on any date
• the number of shares traded on Black Thursday or Black Tuesday
• the peak share price date beyond Cambridge's own "reaching a peak in 1929"
• the popular vote or electoral college result of the 1932 election
• national unemployment as a percentage in any year other than the quarter of the workforce Cambridge gives for 1933
• any single authoritative total for bank failures, for the reason set out in section 13
• the name "Black Monday", which does not appear in the mark schemes read

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