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During the late 1930s, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a series of area descriptions with color-coded maps of cities that summarized mortgage lending risk. We analyze the maps to explain the oft-noted fact that black neighborhoods overwhelmingly received the lowest rating. Our results suggest that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most 4 to 20 percent of the observed concentration of black households in the lowest-rated zones. We also provide evidence that the Federal Housing Administration had its own mapping strategies when evaluating mortgages and relied relatively little on the HOLC maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Depression of the 1930s involved a severe disruption in the supply of home mortgage credit. This paper empirically identifies a mechanism lying behind this credit crunch: the impairment of lenders' balance sheets by illiquid foreclosed real estate. With data on hundreds of building and loans (B&Ls), the leading mortgage lenders in this period, we find that the overhang of foreclosed real estate explains about 30 percent of the drop in new lending between 1930 and 1935. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of American governments in the twentieth century included large increases in funds for social insurance and public assistance. Social insurance has increased far more than public assistance, so "rise in the social insurance state" is a far better description of the century than "rise in the welfare state." The United States has increased total spending in these areas as much or more as have European countries, but the U.S. spending has relied less heavily on government programs. In the U.S. states largely determine the benefits for many of the public assistance and social insurance programs, leading to large variation in the benefits across the country. I develop estimates of these benefits across time and place and compare them to the poverty line, manufacturing earnings and benefits, state per capita incomes in the US, as well as GDP per capita in countries throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Gross Domestic Product recovered much more quickly than labor markets did during the 1930s. We provide new analysis of this issue by estimating a cross-sectional model for individuals in 1939–1940 as a function of the measures of the Great Contraction of 1929–1933, the recovery, and the Second Dip Recession and average information for three types of New Deal spending. The results show that the Great Contraction of 1929–1933 and the Second-Dip Recession still had powerful negative effects on county labor markets in 1939/1940 and these were only partially offset by public works grants. Relief grants had somewhat negative effects although this might have arisen because of a large layoff of workers by the WPA in 1939. The AAA payments to farmers to take land out of production were associated with lower earnings and private employment, but had mixed effects on skill mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of female workers in the 1940s focus on labor supply. We use the basics of supply and demand to measure the impact of WWII on the short- and medium-run demand for female workers in manufacturing. Demand rose for both salaried and production female workers during the war and then fell after the war. However, the post-war demands for both groups were substantially higher than before the war and higher than the levels that would have been reached had the demands followed a counterfactual growth path from the boom period in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article creates a new database that covers all U.S. banks in the census years between 1870 and 1900 to test the interaction between inequality and financial development when the banking system was starting over from scratch. A fixed-effects panel regression shows that the number of banks per thousand people in the South has a strong positive relationship with the size of farm operations. This suggests that large southern farm operators welcomed new banks after the Civil War. When the analysis is extended into the 1900s, the relationship becomes more negative, as bankers may have tried to block entrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To isolate the impact of access to electricity on local economies, we examine the impact of the Rural Electrification Administration low-interest loans in the 1930s. The REA provided loans to cooperatives to lay distribution lines to farms and aid in wiring homes. Consequently, the number of rural farm homes electrified doubled in the United States within five years. We develop a panel data set for the 1930s and use changes within counties over time to identify the effect of the REA loans on a wide range of socio-economic measures. The REA loans contributed significantly to increases in crop output and crop productivity and helped stave off declines in overall farm output, productivity, and land values, but they had much smaller effects on nonagricultural parts of the economy. The ex-ante subsidy from the low-interest loans was large, but after the program was completed, nearly all of the loans were fully repaid, and the ultimate cost to the taxpayer was relatively low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of political power in the U.S. South as the analysis of the book "Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time," by Ira Katznelson. Emphasis is given to topics such as the impact of race relations on the structuring of the New Deal legislation, competition among states in obtaining loans, and solidarity among Southern voters.

To estimate the impact of federal spending on state incomes, we develop an annual panel data set between 1930 and 1940. Using panel methods we estimate that an added dollar of federal spending in the state increased state per capita income by between 40 and 96 cents. The point estimates for nonfarm grants are higher and for AAA farm grants are much smaller and negative in some cases. The spending led to increase in durable good spending on automobiles but had no positive effects on private employment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use 20th-century data to examine how community economic conditions at the time of birth influenced various measures of socioeconomic success as adults. Our analysis focuses on the worst downturn ever experienced in the United States: the Great Depression. We merge individual information reported by respondents in the U.S. Censuses of 1970 and 1980 with information on state per capita income during the individual's year of birth in their state of birth. Results indicate that the effect of state income per capita in the birth year on income and disability later in life varies with changes in income levels. Individuals born in the trough of the Depression in low-income states had substantially lower incomes and higher work disability rates later in life than workers born in those states in the peak year of 1929. However, the effect of being born during the trough of the Depression in states with higher incomes during the first half of the 20th century was much weaker on income and disability later in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We test whether long-differences in the county-level electoral support for Democratic presidential candidates after the 1930s can be attributed to New Deal interventions into local economies. We also investigate more narrowly whether voters rewarded Roosevelt from 1932 to 1936 and from 1936 to 1940 for his efforts to stimulate depressed local economies. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that increasing a county's per capita New Deal relief and public works spending from nothing to the sample mean ($145) would have increased the long-run support for the Democratic party by 2 to 2.5 percentage points. We further find that the long-run shift toward the Democratic party after 1928 was not a function of the Roosevelt landslide victory in 1932. Roosevelt's ability to win over voters during the 1936 and 1940 elections with New Deal spending, however, did matter for the long-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agricultural Adjustment Act has often been held responsible for the rapid reduction of share tenants and sharecroppers (laborers paid shares of the crop) during the 1930s. However, this conclusion has come with limited empirical backing. We shed new light on the consequences of this New Deal policy by empirically testing the role that the AAA cotton reduction program had on the displacement of share tenants and sharecroppers in the Cotton South. The results suggest that the AAA played a significant role in the displacement of black and white sharecroppers and black managing tenants even though it was a violation of AAA contracts for landlords to displace these workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was associated with a population shift in the United States in the 1930s. Evaluating the relationship between the AAA and the incidence of malaria can therefore offer important lessons regarding the broader consequences of demographic changes. Using a quasi-first difference model and a robust set of controls, we find a negative association between AAA expenditures and malaria death rates at the county level. Further, we find that the AAA was associated with increased out-migration of low-income groups from counties with high-risk malaria ecologies. These results suggest that the AAA-induced migration played an important rod in the reduction of malaria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents editorial notes regarding statistics on the operations of the journal as of September 2011, along with a brief correction from the December 2011 issue's journal notes. Statistics are offered charting submissions for the year ending June 30 between 1988 and 2011, the content areas of submitted articles between 2007 and 2011, and the decision turn-over time for selected articles. A list of referees for 2011 is also given, including Ran Abramitzky, Robert Allen, and Maristella Botticini.

An essay is presented that reviews the books "Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War," by Thomas G. Andrews, "The Politics of Identity and Civil Society in Britain and Germany: Miners in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890-1926," by Leighton S. James, and "Welsh Americans: A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields," by Ronald L. Lewis. It focuses on the labor history of the coal industry, examining violent strikes, wages, and working conditions.

We examine the dynamic relationships between relief spending and local private labor markets using a panel data set of relief, private employment, and private earnings. Positive shocks to relief during the First New Deal were followed by increased private employment and earnings, consistent with demand stimulus in that period. On the other hand, increases in work relief spending during the Second New Deal were followed by decreased employment and increased earnings, consistent with crowding out. The timing of spending is consistent with claims that the Roosevelt administration used relief spending to sway elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the impact of the original means-tested old-age assistance (OAA) programs on the health of the elderly prior to the first Social Security pension payments. Before 1935 a number of states had enacted their own OAA laws. After 1935 the federal government began offering matching grants and thus stimulated the adoption of OAA programs by the states. A new panel data set of 75 cities for each year between 1929 and 1938 combines mortality rates for older age groups with three measures of the OAA programs, spending on non-age-specific relief and a rich set of correlates. The data are analyzed using difference-in-difference-in-difference and instrumental variables methods. Our results suggest that old-age assistance in the 1930s had little impact on the death rate of the elderly. Our sense is that the OAA programs in the 1930s transferred the elderly from general relief programs without necessarily increasing the resources available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to assess statistics on state labor regulations and legislation gathered by the U.S. Commissioner of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics and summarized in the volume "History of Labor in the United States" by John R. Commons and Elizabeth Brandeis. Researches attempt to use this information to develop a quantitative measure to examine the changing labor regulatory climate in U.S. states during the progressive era. A series of measures were developed to allow for summary comparisons across both states and time in order to reduce "dimensionality." The constructing of the employment-share-weighted index is discussed.

Abstract: Using county-level data on federal New Deal expenditures on public works and relief and Agricultural Adjustment Administration payments to farmers, this paper empirically examines the New Deal’s impact on inter-county migration from 1930 to 1940. We construct a net-migration measure for each county as the difference between the Census’s reported population change from 1930 to 1940 and the natural increase in population (births minus infant deaths minus non-infant deaths) over the same period. Our empirical approach accounts for both the simultaneity between New Deal allocations and migration and the geographic spillovers that likely resulted when economic activity in one county may have affected the migration decisions of people in neighboring counties. We find that greater spending on relief and public works was associated with significant migration into counties where such money was allocated. The introduction of our modern farm programs under the aegis of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration appears to have contributed to a net out-migration that sped the transition of people out of farming. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using data on New Deal grants to each U.S. county from 1933 to 1939, we estimate how relief and public works spending and payments to farmers through the Agricultural Adjustment Administration influenced retail consumption. On a per capita basis, we find that an additional dollar of public works and relief spending was associated with a 44 cent increase in 1939 retail sales. In contrast, the AAA seems to have had a negative effect on retail sales, suggesting that nonlandowners in the farm sector suffered disproportionate declines in income as a result of the AAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the importance of Roosevelt’s “relief, recovery, and reform” motives to the distribution of New Deal funds across over 3000 US counties, program by program. The major relief programs most closely followed Roosevelt’s three Rs. Other programs were tilted more in favor of areas with higher incomes. For all programs spending for political advantage in upcoming elections was a significant factor. Roosevelt’s successful reelections were based on developing specific programs for a broad range of constituents, delivering on his stated goals, but also spending more at the margin for political purposes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Examines the effectiveness the New Deal in the United States during the 1930s wherein the federal government was involved in the provision of relief. Its impact on infant mortality; Other contributors to a secular decline in infant mortality; Mortality trends.

Offers quantitative and case-study analyses of states' original choices between public and private insurance and examines the adoption of monopoly state insurance on workers' compensation risk in the United States. Origins of workers' compensation; Legislation on workers compensation; Case-study analyses on the insurance schemes of three states.

Examines how institutional changes in the labor markets in the railroad industry between 1890-1945 affected compensating differentials for fatal and nonfatal accident risk. Changes in accident risk, liability rules and wage-setting institutions; Role of unionization; Decline in size of compensating differentials; Government intervention.

Reports a test of the compensating-wage-difference hypothesis on wage samples of men, women, and children from 1884 to 1903. Basic models and results; Compensating differences for unhealthful workplaces; Conclusions.

Examines the quality of sanitation in coal company towns in the United States (U.S.) during the 1920s. Cause of changes in sanitation practices in the U.S.; Factors that influenced the quality of sanitation in company towns; Characteristics of workers in company towns.

Explores the theories and evidence concerning the relationship between coal miners and company-stores. Price-related issues associated with the relationship; Exploitation of labor force in the coal industry.

Focuses on violence in strikes within the bituminous coal industry in the United States from 1890 to 1930. Steps that lead to violent strikes; High rates of strike deaths among workers; Emotional nature of violence.

Current decomposition estimates of sex discrimination by employers are not robust. Many "unobservables," like motivation and attitudes toward work, are left unmeasured. We estimate sex discrimination with two plausible methods of controlling for a major unobservable, acceptance of male and female traditional roles in the household. The methods offer enormously different estimates of sex discrimination. One estimates sex discrimination at over 61 percent of the female wage, the other finds little sex discrimination and possibly favoritism toward women. The range in estimates is so large that point estimates of sex discrimination by employers are of little use to policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the market's ability to limit the impact of discrimination. Methods used in capturing the ability of the workers to avoid danger; Employment conditions used as basis on discrimination; Tests for safety discrimination in the absence of piece-rate wage differentials.

Provides insights into how Minnesota adopted workers' compensation, how its features were determined and how it was amended. Characteristics of workers' compensation laws in the United States from 1911 to 1948; Political economy of workers' compensation in Minnesota; Conclusion.

Discusses the legislation concerning employees' compensation and benefits in the United States. Importance of legislated benefits for employees to the interests of both the employees and employers; Analysis on the political process involving employees compensation and benefits.

An abstract of the article "Did Big Government's Largesse Help the Locals? The Implications of World War II Spending for Local Economic Activity, 1939-1958," by Joseph Cullen, and Price Fishback is presented.

The article presents a study which investigated the effects of the Great Depression on mortality in the U.S. Using dynamic fixed-effects models and adjustments for potential confounding variables, the cause-specific mortalities in 36 U.S. states between 1929 and 1937 were regressed against bank suspensions and income data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Database. It has found that a higher rate of bank suspensions was significantly associated with higher suicide rates. INSETS: Box 1 1930s Explanations for the improved health conditions durin;What is already known on this subject;What this study adds.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Bank failures, mortality and the Great Depression," by J. Granados in the February 13, 2012 issue.