TY - JOUR AU - Fishback,Price V. AU - Horrace,William C. AU - Kantor,Shawn TI - Do Federal Programs Affect Internal Migration? The Impact of New Deal Expenditures on Mobility During the Great Depression JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 8283 PY - 2001 Y2 - May 2001 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8283 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8283.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Price V. Fishback Department of Economics University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 Tel: 520/621-4421 Fax: 520/621-8450 E-Mail: pfishback@eller.arizona.edu William Horrace Center for Policy Research 426 Eggers Hall Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244-1020 Tel: 315/443-9061 Fax: 315/443-1081 E-Mail: whorrace@maxwell.syr.edu Shawn E. Kantor School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts University of California, Merced 5200 N. Lake Road Merced, CA 95343 Tel: 209-228-2956 Fax: 209-228-4007 E-Mail: skantor@ucmerced.edu AB - ** Revised version 2005**

Using a recently-uncovered data set that describes over 30 federal New Deal spending, loan, and mortgage insurance programs across all U.S. counties from 1933 to 1939, 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 spending in one county may have affected the migration decisions of people in neighboring counties. We find that greater spending on relief and public works and a larger value of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration were all associated with migration into counties where such money was allocated. The FHA's stimulus to the housing industry and large-scale public works projects explain most of the regional variation in migration rates across the country. New Deal loans and agricultural spending to take land out of production had negligible effects on migration patterns. ER -