The Political Economy of State-level Emergency Unemployment Relief: The Case of the New York TERA, 1931-37

Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt created The New York State Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA) in response to the Great Depression. Operating from 1931-37, this state-level jobs-and-income style policy featured comprehensive in-kind assistance, “home relief,” and emergency unemployment relief, “work relief.” Though the program is fascinating just in this respect, it has been systematically overshadowed by the alphabet soup of New Deal era relief policies. We revisit the TERA to shed light on what it offered to the people of NY and, overall, what it offered to the economy. We find significant evidence that the program stabilized the State economy by reducing unemployment and generating private sector job creation through the multiplier-accelerator effect