Environmental Migration and Race during the Great American Drought, 1935-1940

We study racial differences in internal migration responses to one of the most severe climatic shocks in US history—the drought of the 1930s. Using data from the 1940 census on 65 million adults, we find that individuals exposed to more severe drought between 1935 and 1940 were more likely to make an inter-county move and that this responsiveness was greater for black individuals than white individuals. This racial difference was particularly pronounced among the rural population. Black individuals' migration premium came despite their systematic disadvantage in the economy of the 1930s and evidence along dimensions other than race that disadvantage limited individuals' ability to adapt to the drought through migration. Federal relief spending under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) magnified this racial difference, reducing the migration response to drought for white individuals and increasing it for black individuals. These results help to better understand how the reaction of different groups aggregate to determine the magnitude and composition of migration responses to natural disasters, as well as the roles of migration and government policy in disadvantaged groups' responses to natural disasters.