When the Race between Education and Technology Goes Backward: The Postbellum Decline of White School Attendance in the Southern US

Abstract

This study examines a sharp decline of school attendance among white children in the Southern US after the Civil War. According to Census data, the school-attendance rate among whites in the Confederate states declined by almost half from 1860 to 1870, whereas that in the Northern states was approximately stable. This shock left the South approximately three decades behind its antebellum trend. We use micro data to examine a variety of hypotheses for this drop. In statistical terms, the decline is related to the postwar drop in local wealth and public-school income. Yet our analysis shows that the relationship between literacy and school attendance appears to be quite stable preand post-war, which suggests for only a minor role for a drop in school quality (or constraints on time in school). As supporting evidence, we show that the return to schooling, measured by the wage premium for skilled workers, declined substantially in the South after the War. Using longitudinally-linked census samples, we show that well-educated Southerners migrated out of the South among cohorts who attended schools after the War.