TY  - JOUR
AU  - Galenson,David W.
AU  - Pope,Clayne L.
TI  - Economic and Geographic Mobility on the Farming Frontier:  Evidence     from Appanoose County, Iowa 1850-1870
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4
PY  - 1989
Y2  - May 1989
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0004
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0004.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Galenson
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-8258
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: galenson@uchicago.edu

Clayne L. Pope
Department of Economics
184 Faculty Office Building
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT  84602-5535
Tel: 801/422-4740
Fax: 801/422-0194
E-Mail: clayne_pope@byu.edu
AB  - This paper investigates the characteristics of the early settlers on the midwestern farming frontier, the correlates of their geographic mobility, and the determinants of their wealth. Using evidence drawn from the manuscripts of the federal censuses of 1850-1870, we find average rates of growth of wealth over time that were considerably above the national average, a steeper cross-sectional relationship between wealth and age than those found for populations drawn more broadly from throughout the United States at the same time, and a substantial positive effect of early arrival on the frontier on wealth levels. These results suggest that very high levels of economic opportunity may have been a characteristic of the nineteenth-century farming frontier.
ER  -