The Impact of Technology and Trade on Migration: Evidence from the US
Citation:
Faber, Marius, Andres Sarto, and Marco Tabellini. "The Impact of Technology and Trade on Migration: Evidence from the US." 2019. View Details|
Working Paper HBS Working Paper Series 2019 Legislators' Response to Changes in the Electorate: The Great Migration and Civil Rights |
Abstract
Between 1940 and 1970, during the second Great Migration, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States. In this period, blacks were excluded from the political process in the South, but were eligible to vote in the North. We study how, by changing the composition and the preferences of the northern electorate, the Great Migration affected voters' demand for and legislators' supply of civil rights legislation. We predict black inflows by interacting historical settlements of southern born blacks across northern counties with the differential rate of black emigration from different southern states after 1940. First, we find that black in-migration increased support for the Democratic Party and encouraged grassroots activism, among both black and white voters. Using historical survey data on whites' racial attitudes, we corroborate these results, but we also unveil more complex, heterogeneous responses to black arrivals among different segments of the white electorate. Second, we document that Congress members representing areas more exposed to black inflows were more supportive of civil rights legislation. This effect, however, was not uniform across parties, as Democratic and Republican representatives became, respectively, more liberal and more conservative on racial issues. Taken together, our findings suggest that, under certain conditions, cross-race coalitions can emerge and have a first order impact on the political and social environment.
Keywords: Great Migration; civil rights; Demographics; Race; Rights; Government Legislation;
Citation:
Calderon, Alvaro, Vasiliki Fouka, and Marco Tabellini. "Legislators' Response to Changes in the Electorate: The Great Migration and Civil Rights." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-017, August 2019. (Revised November 2019.)
