The Long-Run Impacts of Public Industrial Investment on Local Development and Economic Mobility: Evidence from World War II

Andrew Garin and Jonathan Rothbaum
Additional contact information
Jonathan Rothbaum: U.S. Census Bureau

No 24-399, Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research

Abstract: This paper studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security reasons during the United States’ industrial mobilization for World War II. Wartime plant construction had large and persistent impacts on local development, characterized by an expansion of relatively high-wage manufacturing employment throughout the postwar era. These benefits were shared by incumbent residents; we find men born before WWII in counties where plants were built earned $1,200 (in 2020 dollars) or 2.5 percent more per year in adulthood relative to those born in counterfactual comparison regions, with larger benefits accruing to children of lower-income parents. The balance of evidence suggests that these individuals benefited primarily from the local expansion of higher-wage jobs to which they had access as adults, rather than because of developmental effects from exposure to better environments during childhood.

Keywords: public investment; industrial mobilization; counties; manufacturing; local development; long-run earnings; intergenerational effects; WWII (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H56 J31 J62 N42 O25 R11 R53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar ... ext=up_workingpapers (application/pdf)
This material is copyrighted. Permission is required to reproduce any or all parts.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Long-Run Impacts of Public Industrial Investment on Local Development and Economic Mobility: Evidence from World War II (2024)
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:upj:weupjo:24-399

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Upjohn Working Papers from W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 300 S. Westnedge Ave. Kalamazoo, MI 49007 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().