State Per-Capita Income Change Since 1950: Sharecropping's Collapse and Other Causes of Convergence (Contributions in Economics and Economic History) - Hardcover

William H. Crown; Leonard F. Wheat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0313296944 ISBN 13: 9780313296949

Publisher: Praeger (UK), 1995

Synopsis

This book refutes prevailing theories that attribute post-1950 state per capita income convergence to (1) neo-classical adjustment mechanisms, (2) institutional sclerosis, and (3) southern industrialization. Wheat and Crown argue that southern income was low because of slavery's legacy—sharecropping, agricultural dependence, low urbanization, poor education, high Black population percentages, and low wage rates. The legacy's dominant feature was the sharecropper-tenant farmer system, which replaced slavery. Sharecropping was the foundation of southern poverty. Sharecropping's collapse, beginning around 1950, affected all of the other features of slavery's legacy. For example, millions of sharecroppers out-migrated from the South, shifting poverty to the North and lowering the South's Black percentage. This out-migration, white in-migration, and the civil rights movement jointly raised educational attainment in the South, further boosting southern income. Southern industrialization had only a marginally significant effect. In 1950's high income region, the West, the transport cost element in the price of manufactured goods shrank because of (1) transportation improvements and (2) rapid manufacturing growth, which reduced the need for long distance imports from the Manufacturing Belt. The resulting decline in the West's relative cost of living led to wage adjustments. Consequently, the West—despite having the highest manufacturing growth rates—had the nation's lowest per-capita income growth rates. Agricultural decline and educational gains stimulated income growth in the Plains. Nationally, per-capita employment gains were a strong influence.

About this title

About the Author

WILLIAM H. CROWN is Director of outcomes research at The MEDSTAT Group. Dr. Crown's research focuses on the application of econometric methods to problems in outcomes research, the economics of aging, health policy, and regional economics. He has published numerous articles and is coauthor of State Per-Capita Income Change Since 1950 (Greenwood, 1995) and Economics of Population Aging (Auburn House, 1990), and editor of Handbook on Employment and the Elderly (Greenwood, 1996).

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger (UK)
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0313296944
• ISBN 13: 9780313296949
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200