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

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, the cotton-growing regions of the U.S. South were dominated by families of tenant farmers. Tenant farming created opportunities and incentives for prospective tenants to marry at young ages. These opportunities and incentives especially affected African Americans, who had few alternatives to working as tenants. Using complete-count Census of Population data from 1900–1930 and Census of Agriculture data from 1889–1929, we find that increases in tenancy over time increased the prevalence of marriage among young African Americans. We then study how marriage was affected by one of the most notorious disruptions to southern agriculture at the turn of the century: the boll weevil infestation of 1892–1922. Using historical Department of Agriculture maps, we show that the boll weevil’s arrival reduced the share of farms worked by tenants as well as the share of African Americans who married at young ages. When the boll weevil infestation altered African Americans’ opportunities and incentives to marry, the share of African Americans who married young fell accordingly. Our results provide new evidence about the effect of economic and political institutions on demographic transformations.

Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850-1920

“…First, as Alston and Kauffman (1997) note, in some years enumerators at the Census of Agriculture seem to have confused their own definitions and misclassified farms between categories. Second, rates of tenancy and sharecropping are correlated at the county-level and the effects of tenancy on other outcomes are similar; for example, see Bloome and Muller (2015); Bloome, Feigenbaum, and Muller (2017) on the effects of tenancy on marriage. Third, and most important, while each arrangement varied, all had the same structure of land owners outsourcing the management of parts of their land to farm tenants and being paid only at harvest, in contrast to a wage labor system with overseers or owner-managers.…”

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

“…Ager, Brueckner, and Herz (2017) reveal the boll weevil reduced labor force participation (particularly among females), farm wages, and the number of fixed-rent tenant farms, with counties more reliant on cotton experiencing greater declines, illustrating the broader impact of the boll weevil on local economies. Finally, Bloome, Feigenbaum, and Muller (2017) show the boll weevil infestation reduced the proportion of farms worked by tenants, which in turn altered incentives to marry and reduced the proportion of African Americans who were wed at a young age, revealing the weevil's effect on life-altering decisions.…”

Structural Change and the Fertility Transition

“…Ager, Brueckner, and Herz (2017) find that in highly cotton dependent counties the presence of the vermin led to farm closures, a change in tenancy arrangements, removal of land from agricultural production, and a substantial decline in farm wages and female labor force participation. Other recent work shows that the boll weevil increased school enrollment rates of blacks in Georgia (Baker, 2015) and delayed marriage, especially for young African-Americans, as the boll weevil infestation changed the prospects of tenant farming (Bloome, Feigenbaum, and Muller, 2017).…”

“…Even though we only consider married mothers in our analysis, it could be that in infested counties mothers have fewer children because they postpone marriage (Bloome et al, 2017). To address this concern, we include age at marriage fixed effects as additional controls in estimating equation (1).…”