Do I Stay or Do I Go: Evidence from Depression-Era Buyouts of Submarginal Farmland

Beryl Larson, University of California, Davis

In the 1930s, the United States National Resources Planning Board identified over 100 million acres of poor-quality agricultural land where economic opportunities were sparse. To induce migration off this land, the Farm Security Administration purchased millions of acres of submarginal land from landowning farmers in a series of land acquisition projects. This paper examines the success of this program in efficiently re-allocating labor away from intensive agriculture on low-quality land towards higher-productivity work and expanding economic opportunity at the individual level. These projects were constrained geographically and financially, allowing for the plausible comparison of individuals residing within land acquisition project boundaries to those in similar areas excluded from consideration for purchase. In addition to studying the 1930s land acquisition program, this paper introduces the use of previously un-digitized 1930 US Census records containing information on farm values and land use at the Minor Civil Division level. Preliminary results indicate that migration rates off land included in land acquisition projects increased by 5% relative to comparable areas. Landowners living within the geographic bounds of these projects were less likely to own land by 1940, and their children were more likely to have moved out of low-productivity regions by 1950. The paper also studies the distribution of occupations, income, educational attainment within and near to project boundaries over time.

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 Presented in Session 149. Development and Labor