Historical Agricultural Regimes and Intergenerational Mobility

Sara Peters, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The economic structure of the rural United States has changed substantially since the middle of the twentieth century. Concurrent with this economic restructuring, the geography of intergenerational mobility in the US has been shifting. While mobility rates have slowed across the US, some regions and populations show more positive mobility outcomes than others. For example, the Great Plains are characterized by some of the highest mobility patterns, while the South is characterized by the lowest. Recent evidence suggests that this changing geography is the result of the intersecting roles of industrial restructuring and deeply rooted institutional arrangements that have generated geographies of dispossession. However, more research is necessary to unpack how distinct regional histories, combined with patterns of economic restructuring, lead to spatial inequalities in intergenerational mobility. In this project, I use the community capitals framework for economic development developed by Flora and colleagues (2017) to argue that contemporary patterns of mobility are the result of colonial power structures. These historical power structures generated distinct economic development regimes that are rooted in agricultural histories. The community capitals framework is a systems-based approach to understanding a community's resources through the lens of political, cultural, natural, built, social, and financial capitals. Examining agricultural histories using a community capitals framework can offer insights as to how contemporary institutional arrangements emerged through economic development processes. These insights can help explain the spatial variation in mobility-promoting resources across and within regions and counties. I use a comparative case-study approach to explore the agricultural histories of the Great Plains and the Southern regions of the US. More broadly, this project aims to illustrate how conceptual frameworks of development can inform our understanding of population and individual stratification.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 42. Settlement Patterns and Inequality