Long Term Changes in U.S. Agricultural Output per Worker, 1800 to 1900

Thomas Weiss

No 23, NBER Historical Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The nineteenth century was a period of expansion and transformation of American agriculture. While much is known about the process, the exact pace and timing of agricultural productivity change is still unresolved. The traditional view is one of continued progress in which output and productivity increased steadily, accelerating over the period. The Civil War is seen as a convenient turning point, and perhaps an episode of greater consequence. More recent work has raised doubts about this picture of steady and accelerating success. The extant statistics on farm output and its labor force indicate that the period before the Civil War had the superior record and experienced particularly rapid productivity growth between 1820 and 1840. This paper presents new estimates of agricultural output per worker, based on revised statistics of the farm labor force and farm gross product. These new figures present a picture of agricultural progress more like the traditional view. Farm productivity grew noticeably faster after the Civil War than before, and important changes appear to have occurred during the Civil War decade.

Date: 1991-02
Note: DAE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Economic History Review, XLVI, No. 2, May 1993, pp. 324-341

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/h0023.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberhi:0023

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/h0023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Historical Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().