Time on the ladder: Career mobility in agriculture, 1890-1938

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; Northwestern University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 1058-1081
• 关键词: southern agriculture; UNITED-STATES; tenancy; CHOICE; CONTRACTS; GROWTH; TENURE; LABOR

摘要

We explore the dynamics of the agricultural ladder for black farmers in the U.S. South using individual-level data from a retrospective survey conducted in 1938 in Jefferson County, Arkansas. We develop and test hypotheses to explain the time spent as a tenant, sharecropper, and wage laborer. The most striking result of our analysis is the importance of individual characteristics in career mobility. In all periods-pre-World War I; the war years, and subsequent boom; the 1920s; and the Great Depression years-some farmers moved up the agricultural ladder quite rapidly while others remained stuck on a rung.