The Great Migration

This passage was adapted from an article written economists.

Roughly 40 percent of the African American population of the Southern United States left the South between 1915 and 1960, primarily for the industrial cities of the North. While there was some African American migration to the North during the nineteenth century, most accounts point to 1915 as the start of what cotton crops and reduced labor demand in much of the South in the 1910s and 1920s.

In short, the Great Migration began in 1915 and not earlier, because it was only then that the North–South income gap became large enough to start such a large-scale migration. Less clear, however, is why migration continued, and even time that North–South income differences were narrowing.

We propose that once started, migration develops momentum over time as current migration reduces the difficulty and cost of future migration. Economists have typically assumed that people migrate if their expected earnings in the destination exceed those of the origin enough to outweigh the difficulties and one-time costs of migration. Previous research must find housing and work, and they must often adapt to a new culture or language.

Empirical studies show that during the Great Migration, information was passed through letters that were often read by dozens of people and through conversation when migrants made trips back to their home communities. Thus early migrants provided information about labor-and housing-market conditions to friends and relatives who had not yet made the later migrants, so that they did not have to struggle as hard with their new surroundings.