The New Deal, Public Employment, and the Urban-Rural Divide

• In Event: Determinants and Consequences of Social Policies

Abstract

Recent work documents a growing divide between urban and rural America, and some scholars suggest that rural resentment – and, specifically animosity toward public sector employees among rural residents – explains this divide. We trace the origins of this contemporary urban-rural divide to New Deal-era infrastructure programs.

We first demonstrate that New Deal spending predicts public sector employment today: counties that received more investment in building schools, hospitals, courthouses, and other government buildings in the 1930s still have more public employees today. Second, we show that New Deal spending was not distributed equally. Rather, urban counties received much more investment than did less urban counties. In fact, county urbanicity was the strongest predictor of New Deal infrastructure spending. Taken together, these results suggest that the seeds of modern rural resentment were sown in the 1930s. Further analyses will explore how contemporary public sector employee and New Deal spending combines to affect county voting patterns today.

Our paper demonstrates the importance of connecting current politics and patterns to historical events and policies.

Authors

• Michael E. Shepherd, University of Michigan

• Brian T. Hamel, University of North Texas