The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe

Abstract

The 1930s American Dust Bowl was an environmental catastrophe that greatly eroded sections of the Plains. The Dust Bowl is estimated to have immediately, substantially, and persistently reduced agricultural land values and revenues in more-eroded counties relative to less-eroded counties. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became relatively less productive in more-eroded areas. Agricultural adjustments recovered less than 25 percent of the initial difference in agricultural costs for more-eroded counties. The economy adjusted predominantly through large relative population declines in more-eroded counties, both during the 1930s and through the 1950s. (JEL N32, N52, Q15, Q18, Q54)

Social and economic impacts of climate

“…5F). Furthermore, large but temporary climate events, like the U.S. Dust Bowl, have had persistent multidecadal impacts on farm values (89). These findings contrast with historical narratives of farmer adaptability, such as the 200-year-long spread of agriculture into previously nonarable land (90,91) and adjustment of cultivars in response to drought (92).…”

“…Net effects are mixed; for example, urbanization and outmigration from agriculturally dependent areas may increase as temperatures hit crop-damaging levels and moisture declines (89,(168)(169)(170)(171)(172) (Fig. 3P), but nonagricultural workers in Mexico move in response to temperature more rapidly than farm laborers (173), and some of the poorest countries show no emigration response (167).…”

“…More highly adapted populations will have flatter responses (48), such that changes in climatic variables have less influence on an outcome. An alternative approach to detecting adaptation is explicit measurement of outcomes that are themselves thought to be adaptations, such as investing in crop switching after a drought (89). Notably, measurement of adaptation using either approach is made possible by the use of intertemporal changes in climatic variables, whether over short time scales (e.g., days) or long time scales (23) (e.g.…”

“…Existing evidence suggests that high costs of adaptation (48,88,105), incentives to adapt (48,93), limited access to credit for financing adaptations (46), limited rationality when planning for future risks (16,188), incorrect or limited information about the benefits of adaptation (89,189), perverse political incentives (190,191) or weak government institutions (187,192), constraints to sharing risk among individuals and groups (193), and access to technologies (90,185) might play substantial roles, although existing evidence is primarily suggestive as it relies on cross-sectional associations.…”

Migration and Environment

“…From Environmental "Refugees" to Studies of the Vulnerability of the Population Exposed to Environmental Hazards Both recent and historical events remind us that environmental change can induce migration. The dust storm series that affected the US and Canadian Great Plains region for almost a decade in the 1930s created an ecological disaster and precipitated huge movements of population following reductions in agricultural output and land values (Gutmann et al 2005, Hornbeck 2012). More recent events of flooding, like the major floods that struck Bangladesh in 1988 and in 1998, or hurricane damage, like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, as well as drought events in the Sahel have triggered out-migration.…”