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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: College of New Jersey
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050715001515
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 1128-1160
• 关键词: child labor; school attendance; private philanthropy; american south; achievement; blacks; roles; gap

摘要

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.