Land Use and Family Formation in the Settlement of the US Great Plains

Abstract

In agricultural settings, environment shapes patterns of settlement and land use. Using the Great Plains of the United States during the period of its initial Euro-American settlement (1880–1940) as an analytical lens, this article explores whether the same environmental factors that determine settlement timing and land use—those that indicate suitability for crop-based agriculture—also shape initial family formation, resulting in fewer and smaller families in areas that are more conducive to livestock raising than to cropping. The connection between family size and agricultural land availability is now well known, but the role of the environment has not previously been explicitly tested. Descriptive analysis offers initial support for a distinctive pattern of family formation in the western Great Plains, where precipitation is too low to support intensive cropping. However, multivariate analysis using county-level data at 10-year intervals offers only partial support to the hypothesis that environmental characteristics produce these differences. Rather, this analysis has found that the region was also subject to the same long-term social and demographic changes sweeping the rest of the country during this period.

Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains

“…The adult sex ratio is a proxy for family formation, because a high ratio of men to women suggests fewer families; the child-woman ratio is a proxy for fertility, with a low ratio suggesting that couples were limiting family size. The figure shows that there were initially big differences between east and west, with higher sex ratios (more men) and lower child-woman ratios (lower fertility) in the early years in the west (Gutmann et al 2012). Those ratios converge by about 1920.…”

“…As fertility and marriage ages changed, and school attendance patterns were transformed, for example, the age at which children left home went up and down (Gutmann et al 2002). The ethnic composition of settler populations also contributed, with some (for example, Mexicans) initially less likely to form families, and some (for example, Scandinavians) inclined to have larger numbers of children (Gutmann and Fliess 1993; Gutmann et al 2012; Morgan et al 1994).…”

“…For this figure, the East is North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and the West is Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Source: Great Plains Population and Environment database (Gutmann 2007) and Gutmann et al (2012).…”