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

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.

Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892–1930

“…First, using the boll weevil infestation as an environmental shock to tenant farming allows us to generate the best-identified evidence to date relating the organization of agriculture to patterns of marriage in the South. Because farmers were powerless to prevent the weevil’s arrival (Baker 2015:1140; Lange et al 2009:689), our estimates suggest that the relationship between tenancy and early marriage documented in previous research is causal (Bloome and Muller 2015; Landale and Tolnay 1991; Tolnay 1984, 1999). Second, our longitudinal analysis adds further weight to a body of cross-sectional demographic evidence showing that in agrarian societies, people waited to marry until they could acquire land (Hajnal 1965:133; Landale 1989a, b; Tolnay 1999:61).…”

“…We cluster the residuals at the county level. 18 The fact that farmers could not control whether or when their land was infested (Baker 2015; Hunter and Coad 1923) suggests that the errors and the boll weevil indicator are independent. Consequently, τ should capture the causal effect of the boll weevil on our outcomes.…”

“… 8 Several previous studies have used the USDA maps to study the effects of the infestation on migration, agricultural production, schooling, and the agricultural labor market (Ager et al 2017; Baker 2015; Fligstein 1981; Lange et al 2009). …”

Long-Run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil

“…The Boll Weevil, Enrollment, and Attendance Baker (2015) showed that the boll weevil increased the enrollment rate of black children by 4 percent, and had a positive but not statistically significant effect on the white enrollment rate, in Georgia. In this section, we confirm that the boll weevil had a positive effect on enrollment 23 using county-level data from 1900 to 1934 for six Southern states of the Cotton Belt: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and 22 We use the IPUMS-provided, 1950-based occupational income score, which is assigned to individuals based on reported occupation and gives the median total annual income for those employed in that occupation in 1950 according to published census data.…”

“…While some adjustments were made to the school calendar in an attempt to accommodate farming cotton (Collins and Margo 2006), the lengthy harvest period could not be avoided altogether. Baker (2015) provides anecdotal evidence of the conflict between the demand for child labor in farming cotton and schooling in Georgia, but this conflict is not unique to that state. The superintendent of West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, noted, "a falling off in attendance at several schools during the harvesting season ... due to the scarcity of labor and the need of the children in the cotton fields" (Louisiana Department of Education 1908, p. 48).…”