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Title: More Hands, More Power? The Impact of Immigration on Farming and Technology Choices in US Agriculture in Early 20th Century

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: How do technological progress and adoption of new technologies respond to changes in the availability of production factors? This paper attempts to answer this question in the context of US agriculture in the first three decades of the 20th century and its response to immigration-induced labor supply shocks at the local level. We estimate, using the location of past immigrants as instrument for the location choice of new immigrants, the impact of an increase in the number of farm workers per acre on crop choices, capital intensity and technology adoption at the county level using Census of Agriculture data. We find that larger immigrant flows led to slower adoption of labor-saving technologies, such as draft power, a decrease in farm size, an increase in the share of land cultivated by tenants and a shift towards more labor-intensive crops. At the same time, an increase in the number of workers per acre farmed in a particular country led the farms to a lower capital-labor ratio but to almost no changes in the capital-land ratio, even once accounting for changes in crop or tenure. These results suggest that capital over this period was complementary to land and labor, but much less for the latter. The results highlight the role of changes in output mix and in the organization of production as a mechanism to adjust to an influx of labor. However, suggestive evidence indicate that these adjustments in the output mix and in the organization of production did not fully absorb the increase in labor supply, implying that wages did fall, albeit less than without the effects we describe.

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Authors: Lafortune, Jeanne; Tessada, Jose; Gonzalez-Velosa, Carolina

Publisher: Universidad de Chile

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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