Refugees from Dust and Shrinking Land: Tracking the Dust Bowl Migrants

Abstract

We construct longitudinal data from U.S. census records to study the economics of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s. Most of our findings contradict long-standing perceptions. While migration rates were high relative to elsewhere in the United States, they were similar to migration rates from the region in the 1920s. Relative to other occupations, farmers were the least likely to move. Furthermore, migrants from the Dust Bowl were not exceptionally likely to move to California. Finally, there was negligible migrant selectivity, and migration was not associated with long-lasting negative labor market outcomes; indeed, for farmers, the gains from migration were positive.

“The Dust Was Long in Settling”: Human Capital and the Lasting Impact of the American Dust Bowl

“…Neither Dust Bowl severity nor measures of household income and socioeconomic status, conditional on Dust Bowl treatment, are significant in determining the likelihood of migration in childhood (methods and results reported in Sections 1 and 3 of the Online Appendix). The only significant difference is found in Dust Bowl-exposed children from farm households, who were if anything less likely to have migrated before age 12 than the non-farm exposed, consistent with Long and Siu (2016), who find that farmers were the least likely to have moved during the Dust Bowl. Secondary literature, too, suggests an ambiguous (or even non-existent) relationship between migrant status and individual/household characteristics, such as wealth, which one might expect to affect both treatment and the response to the shock (Lord 1938;Wallace 1938;Worster 1979;Nealand 2008;Burns et al 2012;Long and Siu 2016).…”

“…The only significant difference is found in Dust Bowl-exposed children from farm households, who were if anything less likely to have migrated before age 12 than the non-farm exposed, consistent with Long and Siu (2016), who find that farmers were the least likely to have moved during the Dust Bowl. Secondary literature, too, suggests an ambiguous (or even non-existent) relationship between migrant status and individual/household characteristics, such as wealth, which one might expect to affect both treatment and the response to the shock (Lord 1938;Wallace 1938;Worster 1979;Nealand 2008;Burns et al 2012;Long and Siu 2016). Together, these findings suggest no systematic difference in migrant and non-migrant characteristics in this setting.…”

“…Although adult outcomes cannot be linked to childhood erosion below the state level, making it difficult to accurately gauge an individual's actual Dust Bowl exposure, true erosion exposure may not be as strongly tied to birth county erosion as expected, meaning that the state-level construction of erosion exposure may actually yield two advantages over county-level construction. First, a less localized measure reflects the reality of the considerable intra-state, inter-county migration documented within the Dust Bowl region (Long and Siu 2016), and second, a state-level measure is likelier to capture downwind externalities (Hansen and Libecap 2004). Nevertheless, I do take steps to account for the likely level, timing, and duration of exposure.…”

“…Even individuals migrating as children are unlikely to have escaped the phase in which I find the strongest adverse impacts of exposure: the -1 to 0 age band, a narrow and vulnerable timeframe in a child's life. This, added to the fact that interstate migration rates were actually "unusually" low during the 1930s (Rosenbloom and Sundstrom 2004;Long and Siu 2016), suggests migration during the treatment window is unlikely to influence exposure measures.…”

Immigration in American Economic History

“…See alsoHornbeck (2012) andLong and Siu (2013) on migration responses to the Dust Bowl.72 In contrast,Carter and Sutch (2008) argue that immigrants did not crowd out natives during this period because native-and foreign-born workers migrated to the same set of counties.…”