The 1920's weren't a "Golden Age". In the USA Prohibition started with a rise in political corruption and organized crime. There was labor strife and the re-emergence of the KKK. Bosheviks were trying to beat Russia into a communist state, and Stalin took power. Europe had just come out of WW I, with a lot of men damaged physically and mentally walking around. There was streetfighting in Germany. The Spanish Flu epidemic lingered and there were outbreaks of typhus. In Japan and Italy there was the rise of fascism. In China it was the anarchic Warlord Era, and the rest of Asia and all of Africa were colonies in the restive European empires. Portugal had a military dictatorship installed, and substantial colonies in Africa. In 1923 there was the Great Kanto Earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people, and plenty of floods, typhoons, and huricanes that killed thousands. So things were no better than now basically.

But of course everyone didn't have a device in their pocket to remind them of the bad things happening to strangers in faraway places. Writers in New York, London, and Paris had it pretty good, so they could remeber the 20s fondly. Someone working on a plantation in the Congo or Ceylon or Angola, not so much. If you are basing your knowledge of the era on The Great Gatsby, then the 20s looked pretty golden, but the reality is that the human drama and all of the suffering went on as usual.