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Agricultural Productivity Growth During the Decade of the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Lee A. Craig  and
Thomas Weiss
Lee A. Craig
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695–7506; Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research; and Fellow of the Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University.
Thomas Weiss
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045; and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Abstract

New evidence based on census data indicates that output per agricultural worker grew faster between 1860 and 1870 than during any other decade of the nineteenth century. Although this evidence seems to support the traditional view that the Civil War was a catalyst for an increasingly productive agricultural sector, we contend that this apparent robust performance results from a measurement problem that afflicts census-based labor force series. An alternative estimate of labor force performance during the decade reveals the importance of increased labor inputs of women and children, in numbers, effort, and—especially—time.

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Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 527 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

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