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Title: The Export Boom and the Backlash: Reactions to Positive Economic Change in First World War America

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: Extensive scholarship links negative economic change to support for far-right movements. Yet the success of those movements is not confined to periods of economic decline. This article studies the political effects of the positive shock to manufacturing in the US caused by export demand during the First World War. Counties exposed to the boom experienced increases in population, manufacturing output, and wages. They also had more branches of the Ku Klux Klan and other far-right groups, experienced riots in the Red Summer of 1919, reduced the political power of immigrants, and increased law enforcement and incarceration. The export boom, by inducing in-migration, increased the immigrant and nonwhite shares of the population. The lack of negative economic effects on natives suggests that prejudice against out groups, not competition for scarce resources, accounts for the reaction. The path from globalization to illiberal backlash runs through globalization’s winners as well as its losers.

Url: https://theo-serlin.github.io/papers/draft_export_boom_website.pdf

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Authors: Serlin, Theo

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

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