Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T10:03:11.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From the Field to the Classroom: The Boll Weevil's Impact on Education in Rural Georgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2015

Richard B. Baker
Richard B. Baker*
Affiliation:
Richard B. Baker is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, The College of New Jersey, P.O. Box 7718, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing, New Jersey 08628. E-mail: bakerr@tcnj.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I examine how production of a child labor–intensive crop (cotton) affected schooling in the early twentieth-century American South. Because cotton production may be endogenous, presence of an agricultural pest (the boll weevil) is employed as an instrument. Using newly collected county-level data for Georgia, I find a 10 percent reduction in cotton caused a 2 percent increase in black enrollment rate, but had little effect on white enrollment. The shift away from cotton following the boll weevil's arrival explains 30 percent of the narrowing of the racial differential in enrollment rates between 1914 and 1929.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 75 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 1128 - 1160
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I thank Robert Margo, Carola Frydman, and Claudia Olivetti for invaluable advice. I would also like to thank Paul Rhode, Daniel Rees, Eric Hilt, Carolyn Moehling, Elisabeth Perlman, Laura Salisbury, Russell Weinstein, and Dustin Frye for their thoughtful suggestions at various stages of this article's development. I owe gratitude to three anonymous reviewers whose comments significantly improved the quality of this work. Valuable comments from participants at workshops at Boston University, Harvard, Clemson, the 2013 meetings of the Frontier Research in Economic and Social History in Valencia, Western Economic Association International, NBER Development of the American Economy Summer Institute, EconCon, European Historical Economic Society, Economic History Association, and Southern Economic Association are gratefully acknowledged. Assistance from Steven Engerrand and other members of the knowledgeable staff at the Georgia Archives is deeply appreciated. I recognize financial support from the Economic History Association and the Institute for Economic Development at Boston University.

References

REFERENCES

Aaronson, Daniel and Mazumder, Bhashkar. “The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement.” Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 5 (2011): 821–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron and Angrist, Joshua. “How Large are the Social Returns to Education? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws.” NBER Working Paper No. 7444, Cambridge, MA, December 1999.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D. “Instrumental Variables Methods in Experimental Criminological Research: What, Why, and How.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 2, no. 1 (2005): 1–22.Google Scholar
Baker, Richard B. “Public Schooling and Corporate Regulation: Essays on Institutions of Development in the Early Twentieth-Century United States.” Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2014.Google Scholar
Beegle, Kathleen, Dehejia, Rajeev, and Roberta, Gatti. “Why Should We Care about Child Labor? The Education, Labor Market, and Health Consequences of Child Labor.” Journal of Human Resources 44, no. 4 (2009): 871–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boozer, Michael A., and Suri, Tavneet K.. “Child Labor and Schooling Decisions in Ghana.” Unpublished Manuscript, September 2001.Google Scholar
Bradley, Frances Sage, and Williamson, Margaretta A.. Rural Children in Selected Counties of North Carolina. U.S. Children's Bureau, Rural Child Welfare Series No. 2. Washington, DC: GPO, 1918.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Celeste K., and Wanamaker, Marianne H.. “Closing the Gap? The Effect of Private Philanthropy on the provision of African-American Schooling in the U.S. South.” Journal of Public Economics 101 (2013): 53–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cogan, John. “The Decline in Black Teenage Employment: 1950–70.” American Economic Review 72, no. 4 (1982): 621–38.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Wanamaker, Marianne H.. “Selection and Economic Gains in the Great Migration of African Americans: New Evidence from Linked Census Data.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6, no. 1 (2014): 220–52.Google Scholar
Collins, William J., and Margo, Robert A.. “Historical Perspectives on Racial Differences in Schooling in the United States.” In Handbook of the Economics of Education, vol. 1, edited by Hanushek, Eric A and Welch, Finis, 107–54. Elsevier, 2006.Google Scholar
Donohue, John J., and Heckman, James J.. “Continuous versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks.” Journal of Economic Literature 29, no. 4 (1991): 1603–43.Google Scholar
Donohue, John J., Heckman, James J., and Todd, Petra E.. “The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910–1960.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 1 (2002): 225–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishback, Price V., and Baskin, John H.. “Narrowing the Black-White Gap in Child Literacy in 1910: The Roles of School Inputs and Family Inputs.” Review of Economics and Statistics 73, no. 4 (1991): 725–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgia, Comptroller-General. Report of the Comptroller-General of the State of Georgia. Atlanta, 1910–1923.Google Scholar
Georgia Department of Education. Annual Report of the Department of Education to General Assembly of the State of Georgia. Atlanta, 1901–1931.Google Scholar
Giesen, James C. Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunnarsson, Victoria, Orazem, Peter F., and Sánchez, Mario A.. “Child Labor and School Achievement in Latin America.” World Bank Economic Review 20, no. 1 (2006): 31–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haney, P. B., Lewis, W. J., and Lambert, W. R.. Cotton Production and the Boll Weevil in Georgia: History, Cost of Control and Benefits of Eradication. Georgia Agriculture Experiment Stations Research Bulletin No. 428, 2012.Google Scholar
Hunter, W. D., and Coad, B. R. The Boll Weevil Problem. Washington, DC: GPO, 1923.Google Scholar
Kousser, Morgan J. “Progressivism—For Middle-Class Whites Only: North Carolina Education, 1880–1910.” Journal of Southern History 46, no. 2 (1980): 169–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Fabian, Olmstead, Alan L., and Rhode, Paul W.. “The Impact of the Boll Weevil, 1892–1932.” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 3 (2009): 685–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lleras-Muney, Adriana. “Were Compulsory Attendance and Child Labor Laws Effective? An Analysis from 1915 to 1939.” Journal of Law and Economics 45, no. 2 (2002): 401–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A. “Accounting for Racial Differences in School Attendance in the American South, 1900: The Role of Separate-but-Equal.” Review of Economics and Statistics 69, no. 4 (1987): 661–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A. Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margo, Robert A., and Finegan, T. Aldrich. “Compulsory Schooling Legislation and School Attendance in Turn-of-the Century America: A ‘Natural Experiment' Approach.” Economic Letters 53, no. 1 (1996): 103–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Ellen Nathalie, and Dart, Helen M.. The Welfare of Children in Cotton-Growing Areas of Texas. U.S. Children's Bureau, Publication No. 134. Washington, DC: GPO, 1924.Google Scholar
Moehling, Carolyn M. “Family Structure, School Attendance, and Child Labor in the American South in 1900 and 1910.” Explorations in Economic History 41, no. 1 (2004): 73–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Research Council. Cotton Boll Weevil: An Evaluation of USDA Programs. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Orazem, Peter F. “Black-White Differences in Schooling Investment and Human Capital Production in Segregated Schools.” American Economic Review 77, no. 4 (1987): 714–23.Google Scholar
Parajulee, M. N., Wilson, L. T., Rummel, D. R., et al. . “Climatic Data-Based Analysis of Boll Weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Overwintering Survival and Spring Emergence.” Environmental Entomology 25, no. 5 (1996): 882–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qian, Nancy. “Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 3 (2008): 1251–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Alexander, J. Trent, Genadek, Katie, et al. . Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. Paul. “Changing World Prices, Women's Wages, and the Fertility Transition: Sweden, 1860–1910.” Journal of Political Economy 93, no. 6 (1985): 1126–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, James P. “Race and Human Capital.” American Economic Review 74, no. 4 (1984): 685–98.Google Scholar
Smith, James P., and Welch, Finis R.. “Black Economic Progress after Myrdal.” Journal of Economic Literature 27, no. 2 (1989): 519–64.Google Scholar
Stephens, Melvin Jr., and Yang, Dou-Yan. “Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling.” American Economic Review 104, no. 6 (2014): 1777–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stock, James H. and Yogo, Motohiro. “Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression.” In Identification and Inference for Econometric Models: Essays in Honor of Thomas Rothenberg, edited by Andrews, Donald and H, James. Stock, 80–108. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tharp, W. H., and Young, V. H.. “Relation of Soil Moisture to Fusarium Wilt of Cotton.” Journal of Agricultural Research 58, no. 1 (1939): 47–61.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Cotton Production in the United States. Washington, DC: GPO, 1908–1936.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910. 11 vols. Washington, DC: GPO, 1913.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Children in Gainful Occupations at the Fourteenth Census of the United States. Washington, DC: GPO, 1924.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor. By the Sweat and Toil of Children Volume II: The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Agricultural Imports and Forced and Bonded Child Labor. Washington, DC, 1995.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor. List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. Washington, DC, 2012.Google Scholar
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, James, David R., and McCammon, Holly J.. “Citizenship and Public Schools: Accounting for Racial Inequality in Education in the Pre- and Post-Disfranchisement South.” American Sociological Review 62, no. 1 (1997): 34–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, Pamela Barnhouse, McCammon, Holly J., and James, David R.. “Schooling or Working? Public Education, Racial Politics, and the Organization of Production in 1910.” Sociology of Education 63, no. 1 (1990): 1–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Welch, Finis. “Education and Racial Discrimination.” In Discrimination in Labor Markets, edited by Ashenfelter, Orley and Rees, Albert, 43–81. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Baker supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Baker supplementary material(File)
File 8.3 MB