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Title: Railroads and the Rural to Urban Transition: Evidence from 19th-Century Argentina

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: I study the effects of improvements in transport infrastructure on the economic outcomes of parents and their children. To do so, I exploit the expansion of the railroad network in 19th-century Argentina and new longitudinal data following individuals before and after this expansion took place. To deal with the endogeneity of railroad location, I construct an instrumental variable that takes advantage of the fact that districts along the route of province capitals were more likely to be connected. I find that, once their district got connected to the railroad, adults largely remained farmers or farm workers. By contrast, their children moved out of farming toward more modern and higher paying occupations. The movement out of farming occupations reflected both local changes in employment structure and increased migration out of rural areas, and it was more pronounced among children in districts where the soil was not suitable for agriculture. Consistent with the higher level of skills required for this transition out of farming occupations, children in connected districts were more likely to be literate in adult-hood. These results shed light on how improvements in transportation can shape the transition from a mostly rural to a diversified economy. *

Url: http://seperez.ucdavis.edu/uploads/1/0/5/9/105905377/santiago_perez_jmp.pdf

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Authors: Pérez, Santiago

Publisher: Stanford University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Population Mobility and Spatial Demography

Countries: United States