Dust Bowl Migrants: Identifying an Archetype

Voting with their Sandals: Partisan Residential Sorting on Climate Change Risk

“…For example, Hornbeck (2012) shows that in the decades after the Dust Bowl ravaged the U.S. plains the primary margin of stabilizing adjustment was via migration away from the area, but this (de)stabilizing nature of migration depends on the type of resident migration. Consistent with evidence in modern data on sorting near high-risk flood zones (Bakkensen and Ma 2020), and migration following natural disasters (Boustan et al 2012;Mahajan & Yang 2020;Spitzer et al 2020), Hornbeck (2020) shows that Dust Bowl migrants were "negatively selected" via lower education and likely lower income. 5 An important difference in our case is that migration is responding to future expectations, which means that it affects future responses to climate change.…”

Migrant selection and sorting during the Great American Drought

“…Yet, as we expand from the 20 counties at the core of the Dust Bowl, we know less and less of the impact of drought. 8 Migration has likely been the most studied consequence of the Dust Bowl (Hurt 1981;Gregory 1991;Riney-Kehrberg 1994;Worster 2004;Hornbeck 2012;Long and Siu 2018;Hornbeck 2020). For the 20 core Dust Bowl counties, migration rates were high during the 1930s, but migration was also high during the 1920s (Long and Siu 2018).…”

“…Shocks may induce more or less migration in aggregate depending on the average wealth of the impacted area. 3 But we know less about who actually moves or where these migrants go (Gray and Mueller 2012;Sedova and Kalkuhl 2020;Hornbeck 2020). I expand on previous research by estimating the impact of drought on individual migration propensities and destination choices by education.…”

African Americans and federal land policy: Exploring the Homestead Acts of 1862 and 1866

“…The drought had devastating consequences including towering dust storms fueled by "the Great Plow Up" and widespread, repeated, crop failures throughout the region. Many farmers abandoned their property during the 1930s in a mass environmental migration (Hornbeck, 2020;Long & Siu, 2018;Sichko, 2021). Nonetheless, most people stayed and more sustainable agricultural practices (subsidized and orchestrated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the Soil Conservation Service) took hold starting in the mid-1930s (Cunfer, 2005).…”