Collaborative Research: The Economic Origins and Ramifications of the Great Migration

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AbstractTitle: "Collaborative Research: The Economic Origins and Ramifications of the Great Migration"PIs: Marianne H. Wanamaker and William J. CollinsThis project will study the origins and ramifications of the internal migration of southern-born U.S. workers between 1900 and 1940. Social scientists widely view the "Great Migration" of southerners, especially the high rate of migration by African Americans, as one of the most important events in American economic and social history. A key aspect of the project is the development of new datasets that link individuals across census years in the early 20th century, greatly improving the ability to observe and analyze internal migration for both white and black workers.The project will focus on four main areas of inquiry that have been limited by shortcomings of existing datasets: 1) identification of early-life factors, both household and location-specific, that raised or lowered the likelihood of migration and affected occupational choice; 2) measurement of the economic gains that accrued to inter-regional migrants, including differences by race and skill; 3) identifying the role of migration in fostering intergenerational mobility and racial convergence in labor market outcomes; and 4) estimating how social networks, geographic distance, environmental shocks, wage differences, and other factors influenced migrants' selection of destinations.The results and datasets of the project will allow deeper documentation and analysis of American labor markets in the early 20th century than was previously possible. This, in turn, will facilitate comparisons with other times and places, where different institutional and technological contexts prevail (e.g., internal migration in China or the E.U.). It will also demonstrate at a micro-level how migration fueled the structural transformation of the American economy, as agriculture declined in importance, cities grew rapidly, and the South began its economic convergence on the rest on the U.S. Finally, analyses produced in the project will shed light on the economics of discrimination, human capital, intergenerational change, and migration in this important period.