TY  - JOUR
AU  - Alston,Lee J.
AU  - Ferrie,Joseph P.
TI  - Time on the Ladder: Career Mobility in Agriculture, 1890-1938
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11231
PY  - 2005
Y2  - March 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11231
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11231.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lee J. Alston
Institutions Program
Institute of Behavioral Science
Department of Economics
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO  80309-0483
Tel: 303/492-4257
Fax: 303/492 2151
E-Mail: Lee.Alston@colorado.edu

Joseph P. Ferrie
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208-2600
Tel: 847/491-8210
Fax: 847/491-7001
E-Mail: ferrie@northwestern.edu
AB  - We explore the dynamics of the agricultural ladder (the progression from laborer to cropper to renter) in the U.S. before 1940 using individual-level data from a survey of farmers conducted in 1938 in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Using information on each individual's complete career history (their tenure status at each date, in some cases as far back as 1890), their location, and a variety of their personal and farm characteristics, we develop and test hypotheses to explain the time spent as a tenant, sharecropper, and wage laborer. The pessimistic view of commentators who saw sharecropping and tenancy as a trap has some merit, but individual characteristics played an important role in mobility. In all periods, some farmers moved up the agricultural ladder quite rapidly while others remained stuck on a rung. Ascending the ladder was an important route to upward mobility, particularly for blacks, before large-scale migration from rural to urban places.
ER  -