@article{183832c25adc4496ba66ecd72d8b231f,
title = "The impact of New Deal expenditures on mobility during the great depression",
abstract = "Using county-level data on federal New Deal expenditures on public works and relief and Agricultural Adjustment Administration payments to farmers, this paper empirically examines the New Deal's impact on inter-county migration from 1930 to 1940. We construct a net-migration measure for each county as the difference between the Census's reported population change from 1930 to 1940 and the natural increase in population (births minus infant deaths minus non-infant deaths) over the same period. Our empirical approach accounts for both the simultaneity between New Deal allocations and migration and the geographic spillovers that likely resulted when economic activity in one county may have affected the migration decisions of people in neighboring counties. We find that greater spending on relief and public works was associated with significant migration into counties where such money was allocated. The introduction of our modern farm programs under the aegis of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration appears to have contributed to a net out-migration that sped the transition of people out of farming.",
keywords = "Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Great depression, Migration, New Deal, Public Works Administration, Relief programs, Spatial autocorrelation, Works Progress Administration",
author = "Fishback, {Price V.} and Horrace, {William C.} and Shawn Kantor",
note = "Funding Information: The authors are deeply indebted to Larry Neal and Joseph Mason who facilitated the collection of the New Deal data used in the paper, Roger Paine and Joe Johnston of the US Geological Survey and Amy Tujaque of Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center for the US Army Corps of Engineers for their help in providing data on geographical features, and Todd Sorensen and Mickey Lynn Reed for their help in converting mapped information on soil quality into a county data set. We thank seminar participants at the 2000 NBER-DAE Summer Institute and Syracuse University for valuable advice. The paper benefited from suggestions by Daniel Ackerberg, Lee Alston, Joseph Ferrie, Robert Fleck, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Ryan Johnson, Harry Kelejian, Lawrence Katz, Lars Lefgren, Steven Levitt, Gary Libecap, Robert Margo, Caroline Moehling, Ronald Oaxaca, Tracy Regan, Kenneth Sokoloff, and John Wallis, and some anonymous referees. We owe special thanks to Kari Beardsley, Amanda Ebel, Michael Hunter, Angela Phillips, and Jeffrey Taylor for their help in computerizing the data. Financial support has been provided by National Science Foundation Grants SBR-9708098, SES-0080324, and SES-0214395, the Earhart Foundation, the University of Arizona Foundation, and the University of Arizona Office of the Vice President for Research. The findings in this article should not be seen as representing the views of any of these funding agencies. ",
year = "2006",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1016/j.eeh.2005.03.002",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "43",
pages = "179--222",
journal = "Explorations in Economic History",
issn = "0014-4983",
publisher = "Academic Press Inc.",
number = "2",
}