Push and Pull in Migration from Southern Farms

There is a general consensus among regional economists that the transfer of labor between the farm and non-farm sectors of the South have been a major source of the region’s growth in per capita income and it’s ability to catch up with with rest of the nation. However, it is important to recognize that behidn the talk of convergence rests a sesnse of complacency ocncerning the natural workings of the American economy. Before to much credit is taken, a welfare analysis of the South’s transformation is appropriate The question in this paper is whether the human costs of industrialization were unnecessarily high.