War Procurement and the Geography of Structural Transformation: Evidence from the U.S. Civil War

Lovepreet Singh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This paper focuses on government-driven economic expansion resulting from industrial mobilization in the U.S. North during the Civil War to investigate whether short-term regional government intervention improves long-term outcomes for local economies and individuals. I examine the period from 1820 to 2000, comparing counties that hosted government procurement and manufacturing facilities, specifically Quartermaster (QM) and Ordnance depots, to counties with similar population levels, infrastructure, and manufacturing capacity in 1860. I find that the presence of these facilities incentivized significant manufacturing firm entry, which had large and persistent impacts on county development, resulting in higher population growth, manufacturing employment, and income per capita, with manufacturing's overall contribution to local economies increasing substantially. Individuals in treated counties also exhibit greater upward mobility than those in the counterfactual group: men born between 1850 and 1860 who lived in treated counties during the Civil War achieved significant improvements in occupational standing relative to their household backgrounds, with the most substantial gains concentrated among those from low-occupational-score households in 1860. Treated counties further exhibit a significant uptick in innovation activity in the post-Civil War period. The nature of the facility proves consequential for long-run persistence; counties containing QM sites exhibit sustained effects over time, while Ordnance sites do not. Finally, this agglomeration of manufacturing establishments created conditions for the emergence of the industries of the “future”, including machinery and vehicle manufacturing.

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 Presented in Session 212. Using IPUMS Full Count Data: Spatial Dimensions in Historical Data