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Human Capital and Growth in the Postbellum South: A Separate but Unequal Story

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2004

MICHELLE CONNOLLY
MICHELLE CONNOLLY
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Duke University, 213 Social Sciences, Box 90097, Durham, NC 27708. E-mail: connolly@econ.duke.edu
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Abstract

This article tests the importance of human capital in explaining convergence across the states from 1880 to 1950. Human capital matters to a state's income level and to its growth rate through technological diffusion. The South, whose overwhelmingly agricultural society relied more heavily on work experience than formal education, and whose racial discrimination in school resource allocation lowered human capital accumulation of both blacks and whites, presents a unique pattern. The South's low human capital levels following the Civil War and its active postbellum resistance to education reduced its speed of conditional convergence toward the rest of the nation.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 363 - 399
Copyright
© 2004 The Economic History Association

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