EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Long-Run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil

Richard B. Baker, John Blanchette and Katherine Eriksson ()

The Journal of Economic History, 2020, vol. 80, issue 1, 136-174

Abstract: The boll weevil spread across the South from 1892 to 1922 with devastating effect on cotton cultivation. The resulting shift away from this child labor–intensive crop lowered the opportunity cost of school attendance. We investigate the insect’s long-run effect on educational attainment using a sample of adults from the 1940 census linked back to their childhood census records. Both white and black children who were young (ages 4 to 9) when the weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.24 to 0.36 years. Our results demonstrate the potential for conflict between child labor in agriculture and educational attainment.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Long-run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil (2018) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:80:y:2020:i:1:p:136-174_5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:80:y:2020:i:1:p:136-174_5