Municipal Housekeeping: The Impact of Women’s
Suffrage on the Provision of Public Education
Celeste K. Carruthers and Marianne H. Wanamaker∗
April 2012
W ORK IN PROGRESS
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Abstract
Models of intrahousehold bargaining and electoral competition predict that (1) women place a
higher value on child welfare than men and (2) public expenditures change to better reflect these
preferences in the wake of women’s suffrage. We use newly digitized data on local educational expenditures and schooling resources in five segregated Southern states to test whether the Nineteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the voting franchise to all adult women in
the country, explains part of the momentous growth in educational expenditure and school quality
throughout the inter-War years. We find that suffrage increased local educational spending and local tax revenues earmarked for education. Furthermore, we show that suffrage improved measures
of superficial school quality, more so for white schools than black schools. Consistent with earlier
research, we find little to no effect of suffrage on State spending for schools, suggesting that local
school officials were more responsive to new women voters than state policymakers.
JEL Codes: H75, I22, P16
∗
Carruthers: University of Tennessee, 702 Stokely Management Center, Knoxville, TN 37996-0570, [email protected]. Wanamaker: University of Tennessee, 524 Stokely Management Center, Knoxville, TN 379960550, [email protected]. Ye Gu, Andrew Moore, James England, III, and Nicholas Busko provided outstanding
research assistance. We are grateful to Kenny and Lott for graciously sharing their data. Seed funding for this project
was provided by the University of Tennessee Office of Research. Additional support includes a grant from the Spencer
Foundation, grant number 201200064, and a grant from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research via
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation,
grant number 5 U01 PE000002-06. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the authors
and should not be construed as representing the opinion or policy of the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, or any agency of the Federal Government. All errors are our own.
1
1 Introduction
“The men have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they
have always been indifferent to details of the household... The very multifariousness
and complexity of a city government demand the help of minds accustomed to detail
and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young
children and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of others.”
- Jane Addams1
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States held a position of distinction in the
provision of public education. Enrollment rates were exemplary. Among its Western Hemisphere
peers, the U.S. exhibited the highest elementary enrollment rates, as measured by 1-8 grade enrollment (so-called “common school” enrollment). In addition, the U.S. was showing early leadership
in the race towards mass secondary education. Indeed, the United States had enjoyed a substantial
and persistent mass education advantage since the middle of the previous century aided, according to Claudia Goldin, by the country’s commitment to a set of “egalitarian principles.”2 These
principles included “public funding, openness, gender neutrality, local (and also state) control,
separation of church and state, and an academic curriculum,” and they drove the United States to
world leadership in education provision by 1900. As the twentieth century progressed, the United
States deepened its leadership position in the provision of public education and brought secondary
education to the masses. The country had exhibited exemplary and almost universal elementary
enrollment rates by the middle of the nineteenth century, and by the dawn of the second world war,
the median United States 19-year-old was a secondary school graduate.
The available literature cites the continued application of American egalitarian principles and
strong labor market demand for an educated workforce to explain the steady advance of U.S.
public education provision.3 Yet, as we show in Figure 1: Panel I, the growth of U.S. education
provision was not constant over the course of the century; the commitment of local school districts
to the funding of public education exhibits a marked uptick around 1920. Given the timing of
the change, is there a role for universal suffrage in explaining the renewed commitment of school
1
Quoted in Harper (1922), p. 178.
Goldin (2001).
3
Goldin & Katz (2009).
2
2
districts to public education finance? A recent literature highlights a greater propensity of women
to support the provision of public goods, to foster the expansion of government to benefit child
welfare and, in some ways, to hold Goldin’s “egalitarian principles” closer to heart. Standard
models of electoral competition indicate that policy makers will respond to shifting preferences
of their electoral base by altering their own voting behavior. In our context, the enfranchisement
of women would have resulted in greater education expenditures following the ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment. Indeed, other researchers in this literature have identified a measurable
impact of expanded suffrage on government provision of other services.4 So can the expansion
of voting rights to include American females explain the rise in education funding in the early
twentieth century?
We use a new, county-level panel dataset of education spending for a handful of Southern
U.S. states to test this hypothesis. Comparing annual education finance statistics to the timing of
women’s suffrage, we examine the role of suffrage in generating meaningful changes in education
expenditures. Although women’s suffrage was universally mandated by the Nineteenth Amendment and enforced nationwide in 1920, we rely on cross-county demographic variation to identify
the impact of interest. Both the relative size of the female voting-age population and the median
age of female voters differed substantially by county. We exploit this demographic variation as a
measure of the relative power of females in the democratic process to generate testable implications for education spending. in addition, women were granted the right to vote in local elections
prior to the national mandate and the date of this early access differed by state. We utilize this additional variation in female enfranchisement and test for changes state-level education expenditure
in response to partial women’s suffrage.
Because our data is focused on the Jim Crow-era South, we have an additional dimension of
variation to add to the electoral model. Although the Nineteenth Amendment theoretically applied
to all females of voting age, the de jure outcome was an expansion of voting rights to white females
more so than to black females. Severe disenfranchisement through poll taxes, literacy tests, and
basic intimidation meant that although the median Southern voter became more female after 1920,
it did not become any less white until later decades. But because schools were segregated and education expenditures were reported by race, as a further test of our predictions, we examine whether
4
Husted & Kenny (1997), Miller (2008), Lott & Kenny (1999).
3
the expansion of voting rights to white females affected expenditures on white schools differently
from black schools. We find that expanded suffrage substantially increased public expenditures
on white schools, but not on black schools. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that
Southern policy makers responded to the preferences of the newly enfranchised female vote.
2 Theoretical Foundation
Our study is motivated by the observation that per capita education expenditures in the United
States demonstrate a marked uptick around 1920. The accelerated growth of education funding
may be the result of numerous causes: the impact of World War I, rising living standards and
incomes, a modernizing work force and a rising demand by employers for formal human capital,
changes in compulsory schooling requirements, or expanded “free tuition” legislation.5 Our study
examines the role of an expanded electorate in the expenditure increase.
We rely on two distinct lines of economic research to motivate the analysis. First, a classical
model of electoral competition indicates that policymakers will vote in accordance with the view
of the median voter in the electorate.6 Changes in the size of the electorate matter inasmuch
as new participants in the political process exhibit different preferences from incumbents. The
Nineteenth Amendment clearly expanded the size of the electorate; if the new median voter also
exhibited a greater preference for spending on public education, we should observe an acceleration
in expenditures as a result.
Second, we note a series of empirical results documenting a greater preference of females for
goods that enhance child welfare and for the provision of public goods, in general. In the intrahousehold context, a number of studies have shown an increased propensity of females to invest
in the health and welfare of their own children, relative to their male counterparts.7 An increase
in the financial resources of women relative to men consistently results in higher expenditures on
goods benefitting the household’s children (food, clothing, and child care) at the expense of goods
such as alcohol and tobacco. Welfare outcomes for children in the household also tend to rise with
the mother’s financial resources. Anthropometric status, nutrition, and child survival rights have
5
See Goldin & Katz (2009) for a more thorough discussion.
See Baumgardner (1993), Bowen (1943) and Black (1948).
7
See Doepke & Tertilt (2010) for a summary of the empirical findings.
6
4
all been shown to increase with the mother’s income share.8
In addition to an increased propensity to invest financial resources in their own children, women
also appear to prefer a larger number of public goods in general and goods benefitting children (not
their own) in particular. Focusing on women’s voting rights, rather than their financial resources,
Lott & Kenny (1999) credit the enfranchisement of women with an increase in overall government
expenditures and revenue in the early twentieth century United States. At the state level, however,
they find no significant impact on specific components of government expenditure including social
services and education. Miller (2008) demonstrates that the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the subsequent increased voting power of women resulted in a sizable increase in local
public health spending and a decrease in child mortality rates.
This paper focuses specifically on the impact of female enfranchisement on the provision of education. Intra-household, Pitt & Khandker (1998) document an increased propensity of both male
and female children to attend school with a rise in female income among Bangladeshi households.
From a public goods perspective, we know of no specific evidence that women exhibit a higher
preference for the provision of public education than do men.
If policymakers respond to the median voter as hypothesized and if females are more publicgoods-loving than males, the enfranchisement of women should have increased government expenditures on public goods, just as Lott & Kenny (1999) have found. If the higher preference of
women for public goods extends to education, we should observe an increase in public resources
devoted to education at the same juncture.
We draw the following testable implications:
1. Under the assumption that policymakers respond to the median preference of their electorate
and that women have a higher preference for the provision of public education than do men,
the enfranchisement of women in 1920 should have increased the size of local school districts’ budgets.
2. Policymakers, responding to an increased franchise for women, should be more sensitive
the larger the share of females among the electorate. Thus, gains in spending should be
8
See Atkin (2009) and Duflo (2003) for the anthropometric results, Rubalcava et al. (2009) for nutritional status,
and Thomas (1990) for child survival results. See Wolpin (1993) for a more complete summary of the literature on
health outcomes of children.
5
higher where the female share of the population is higher. We also test whether the impact
of suffrage was larger in areas with younger female voting-eligible populations, although
our expectations for this measure of the “dosage” of suffrage treatment are less clear.9
3. If female preference for education provision is race-discriminating, spending on white schools
should rise more when white females are relatively more enfranchised and spending on black
schools should rise more when black females are relatively more enfranchised.10 The U.S.
South in 1920 was characterized by rampant, informal disenfranchisement of black voters,
both male and female. Thus, the Nineteenth Amendment granted access to the political
process for white women much more so than for black. Thus, gains in spending on white
schools should be higher than gains on black schools.
3 Data
To measure the impact of suffrage on the local provision of education, we utilize a newly transcribed dataset of county-level black and white public schooling statistics between 1910 and 1940
for five Southern states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Each
state’s Department of Education or equivalent office published an annual report containing statistics on enrollment, attendance, teachers, expenditures, revenues, and teacher certification disaggregated by county and often race. These data and the data collection process are described in detail in
Appendix 1 and in Carruthers & Wanamaker (2012). Transcribed data are assembled into a countyby-race panel describing the students, teachers, and finances of each county in these states. Note
that local educational expenditures include all spending from state and federal transfers, since local
school districts channeled intergovernmental support for public education. Although related work
has found no significant impact of suffrage on state-level educational spending,11 our measure of
school spending better captures the contribution of federal, state, and local spending combined.
The conceptual framework outlined above generates testable implications regarding the dosage
9
Historically, voter turnout has been lower among younger voters, but we might expect an exception to this pattern
in the case of younger women voters following the Nineteenth Amendment. The suffrage movement was dominated
by young and middle-aged women, and moreover, younger women with school-aged children likely had stronger
preferences for public education.
10
By “race-discriminating” preference for education, we mean whether the preference for higher education provision among females is higher for spending on their own race.
11
Total educational spending was one of multiple outcomes analyzed by Lott & Kenny (1999) and Miller (2008).
6
of suffrage treatment across local areas. In order to exploit inter-county variation in the size and
composition of the female population proximate to 1920, we needed more granular population
statistics than are available in the published census volumes. We populated 1920 age-by-race-bygender cells for each county in our 5-state sample using data from the genealogy website Ancestry.com, which contains a 100 percent count of the 1920 U.S. Census.
Finally, we matched the education panel and 1920 demographic data to additional county-level
variables from decennial population and agricultural censuses taken in 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940.
Relevant statistics from these census reports include black-white population ratios, crop value per
capita, and the percent of land devoted to agriculture. We interpolate between census years to form
annual measures of census variables to fully populate our panel data.
Together, these data provide a rich description of school resources in Southern segregates states
before and after the Nineteenth Amendment, as well as a unique profile of gender-by-race age
distributions in 1920. Table 1 lists descriptive statistics for school spending outcomes and other
measures of public school resources, suffrage treatment measures, and Census controls.
4 Empirical Strategy and Results
We begin by describing some of the stylized facts relevant to this application. First and foremost,
per-capita spending on schools increased substantially in the years immediately following 1920.
For the five-state sample, Figure 1 plots (1) per-capita school spending by year for all of the United
States (Panel I) and for our transcribed five-state sample of local school data (Panel II) as well as
(2) per-capita school revenues that were drawn from from local taxes for our sample (Panel II).
Both trends were rising prior to the Nineteenth Amendment, but exhibit a much steeper climb after
1920.
To obtain a sense of the magnitude of shifts in spending following 1920, we estimate a simple
empirical model of the following form:
ln(Yct ) = α + SU F F RAGEt β + Xct γ + θc + α(t) + θc ∗ α(t) + εct
(1)
where Yct is a measure of public educational spending or tax transfers for county c at time t (in
1925 dollars), SU F F RAGEt is an indicator variable equal to one in 1920 and later, Xct is a matrix
of county observable features measured decennially, θc is a county fixed effect, and α(t) is a linear
7
trend equal to zero in 1910. The interaction θc ∗ α(t) controls for linear, county-specific trends in
educational spending. (t ∈ [1910, 1940]) Variables in Xct include the value of crops per capita, the
percent of land devoted to agriculture, and the black-white population ratio. Agricultural economic
activity was a close substitute to schooling in rural areas, but Southern economies were shifting to
a more industrial emphasis over this time period. Xct variables will help to control for non-linear
agricultural and demographic trends that may have affected educational resources.12
Equation 1 is very similar to the model employed by Miller (2008), who identified the effect
of suffrage on public health services and child mortality, with one important difference that affects
the strength of our causal inference. Miller (2008) and Lott & Kenny (1999) exploit the fact that 29
out of 48 states extended voting rights to women before 1920 to identify the effect of suffrage from
intertemporal variation in women’s voting rates within states. None of the states in our sample of
transcribed local education data offered women’s suffrage prior to the passage of the Nineteenth
Amendment in 1920. One benefit from this limitation is that we can definitively rule out policy
endogeneity as a driving factor behind our results. Each of the states in this sample was coerced
into extending the voting franchise by the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (which none of
these states ratified prior to 1920). Even so, we have just one point of intertemporal variation in
suffrage, and it is shared by all counties in our panel. The parameter β returns the percent gain
in educational spending and other outcomes following 1920: that is, β is not so much a “suffrage
effect” as a “post-1920 effect, including suffrage.” Accordingly, we treat Equation 1 as a starting
point and use other testable implications of the conceptual framework to further test the hypothesis
that public support for schools increased in the wake of women’s political enfranchisement.
Table 2 lists coefficient estimates for four specifications of Equation 1 using different Yct measures: total school spending, local tax transfers for public schools, white school spending, and
black school spending. Note that the latter two outcomes are not known for North Carolina, whose
annual reports indicated total educational spending but do not disaggregate spending by race. Results indicate that total educational spending increased 34 percent in the post-suffrage era, and
districts’ revenues from local taxes increased 31 percent. Educational spending and tax revenues
also increased with the population, decreased with the value of agricultural crops, and decreased
12
Note that we do not control for total population in Equation 1, because county fixed effects and county-specific
time trends will account for scale effects. Results are not sensitive to the inclusion of total population controls.
8
with the percent of land devoted to agriculture (or equivalently, education spending grew as less
land was used for agriculture). Finally, we show that educational spending increased with the
black-to-white population ratio but that school revenues from local taxes (and likely, the property
tax base) decreased as blacks accounted for larger and larger shares of the population.
As we delve into these data further, we find that this sudden rise in educational spending was not
evident in all schools. For four of the states in our sample, expenditures are reported separately by
race. Figure 2 plots per-capita school expenditures by race and shows that post-suffrage spending
gains were limited to white schools. Spending on black schools climbed steadily throughout this
period, but in contrast to spending on white schools, exhibited no observable break around 1920. If
changes in school spending overall were in fact attributable to changes in the electorate around the
Nineteenth Amendment, we should not be altogether surprised that white schools benefitted more
than black schools from women’s suffrage given the obstacles black voters faced in exercising
a meaningful voice in the political process. That is to say, the median voter better represented
women’s preferences following the Nineteenth Amendment, but black men and women were no
more enfranchised than they were before 1920.
We utilize the disparity in white versus black political enfranchisement as our first causal test
for the impact of women’s suffrage on educational spending and resources. Specifically, we estimate Equation 1 separately for white and black educational spending. Coefficients are in Columns
(3) - (4) of Table 2. There, we show that white school spending gained 16 percent following
1920, but black spending did not significantly change. If the trajectory of black spending is an
adequate counterfactual to the trajectory of white spending, this means that women’s suffrage was
responsible for a large share of the 34 percent rise in educational spending after 1920.
Next, we exploit additional implications of the conceptual framework to check that women’s
participation in the political process was responsible for higher educational spending. Gains in educational spending should be greater in areas where new turnout is expected to be larger after the
Nineteenth Amendment. We consider two proxies for female turnout. In counties where women
represented a larger share of the voting-eligible population, we should see an even steeper climb in
educational spending if – as hypothesized – pre-suffrage spending was below the median female
voter’s preferred level of spending. Similarly, we may see a steeper climb in counties with relatively higher shares of younger, voting-eligible women, who were more apt to have school-aged
9
children who would benefit from better-funded schools and who may have been more receptive to
newly acquired voting rights.13 We test these expectations with Equation 2:
ln(Yct ) = α + SU F F RAGEt β + δSU F F RAGEt ∗ Zc + Xct γ + θc + α(t) + θc ∗ α(t) + εct
(2)
where Zc in the interaction term is either the percentage of adults who were female in 1920, the
percentage of white adults who were female, the median age of adult females, or the median age
of adult white females. For ease of comparison across proxies and spending outcomes, we limit
this analysis to the four states with segregated spending data.
Results, located in Table 3, indicate that the rise in post-1920 education spending was significantly, positively correlated with the share of females in the voting population. For each percentage
point gain in the share of 1920 adults who were female, total educational spending increased 1.8
percent and spending on white schools increased 2.3 percent after the Nineteenth Amendment
was passed. Curiously, higher shares of females were associated with lower local tax transfers to
schools following 1920, which may reflect lower tax bases more so than the effects of suffrage.
The third row of Table 3 indicates that in counties where the median age of females was one year
younger, educational spending increased by about 5 percent, regardless of whether we examine
total spending, white spending alone, or black spending alone. Younger age distributions among
white females are linked to higher spending in white schools alone. Note also that older female
populations were associated with higher tax transfers after suffrage, which is consistent with a
stronger tax base in areas with older households. Together, these results suggest that women’s
suffrage played a role in increasing educational spending and that white schools benefitted from
suffrage more than black schools, but also that black school spending rose in areas with younger
female populations. This latter finding could be explained by two mechanisms worthy of further
exploration: perhaps younger black women were partially enfranchised or perhaps white female
voters’ preference for education extended to black schools as well.
13
As noted above, median female age is a more nuanced proxy of suffrage treatment than female population shares,
because younger adults are traditionally less likely to exercise their right to vote. This tendency would have offset
turnout gains from female voters with stronger commitment to the suffrage movement or stronger preferences for
public schools.
10
5 Mechanisms
In this section, we use rich statistics describing county-level educational resources other than
spending to identify potential mechanisms by which women’s suffrage affected the quality of public schooling in the South.
Figure 3 illustrates trends in four measures of superficial school quality before and after the
Nineteenth Amendment: average term lengths (measured in days per year), the average number of
teachers in each county, average teacher salaries, and the number of schools per 1,000 individuals
under 17. Term lengths and teacher counts show steady growth around 1920, but trends in teacher
salaries and school counts exhibit interesting shifts just after 1920. Even though white schools
were steadily consolidating throughout this period, the number of white schools per 1,000 minors
moderately spiked after 1920 before returning to its downward path. Black school counts showed
no analogous change. Average white teacher salaries – which were recorded with more noise than
the number of schools – also trended upward right after 1920.
We estimate Equation 1 for each school resource depicted in Figure 3 to quantify these changes
while controlling for linear trends in school resources, county fixed effects, decennial agricultural
variables, and decennial black-white population ratios. Results are listed in Table 4. As before (See
Table2) our variable of interest is the indicator for “Year ≥ 1920,” but we are careful to emphasize
that coefficients are the causal impact of all policies and socioeconomic changes unique to 1920,
including widespread women’s suffrage. Following 1920, we find large black-white disparities
in the relative advancement of all four proxies for school quality. White term lengths increased
by 8 days, compared to 5 days for black schools. The number of white teachers increased by an
astounding 26 per county, compared to just 1 for black teachers. White teacher salaries saw no significant change on average, but worryingly, black salaries trended down by $52 in real terms after
1920 (conditional on other variables in Equation 1). And finally, the number of white campuses
did in fact increase by a statistically significant 0.34 schools per 1,000 minors, suggesting that the
post-1920 spike in white schools seen in Figure 3 was more than noise. By contrast, the number
of black schools per 1,000 minors declined after 1920, relative to linear trends and controlling for
agricultural and population shifts between Censuses.
As with our analysis of spending and taxes in the previous section, we now test whether these
11
post-1920 changes in school resources were related to cross-sectional variation in demographic
features of counties’ female populations as of 1920. Specifically, we estimate Equation 2 with
school resource measures as dependent variables. Results are listed in Table 5. We find that
every proxy of female turnout was associated with significant changes in average term lengths for
black schools (again, relative to linear trends in black term lengths), but higher dosages of suffrage
treatment were linked to higher or lower black term lengths. Counties with higher shares of adult
females or adult white females, for instance, realized lower black term lengths. But decreasing
the median white female age by one year, for instance, increased black term lengths by 2 days.
The ambiguous effect of demographic proxies for suffrage strength on black term lengths echoes
some of our findings for black school spending. Younger female populations also coincided with
gains in white teacher counts that outpaced black teacher gains by a factor of at least six, as well as
gains in white school counts but no perceptible increase in black schools. Results in Tables 3 and
5 are preliminary but point to a more nuanced model of political economy than one that simply
attributes all suffrage rights to white women rather than black. Perhaps black women were – at
least – partially enfranchised by the Nineteenth Amendment, or perhaps younger white women
held more egalitarian, less race-discriminating preferences for public education.14
6 Evidence from State Expenditures
Thus far we have devoted our analysis to the effect of suffrage on the provision of local educational
resources, as reported to state Departments of Education. This is a sensible limitation, given the
dominant role that local leaders and school districts played in collecting revenues for schools and
allocating resources. But states played a role in the provision of public education as well, and in
this section we test whether suffrage affected state-level education expenditures.
In some states, women were granted full suffrage in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
As illustrated by Figure 4, however, most states extended the voting franchise to women after
1910. Following Lott & Kenny (1999) and Miller (2008), we use this intertemporal variation in
women’s suffrage to test for the effect of women’s suffrage on public expenditures, focusing on
state expenditures for education. Figure 4 also plots, by year, the number of states offering partial
14
Our ongoing work on this topic explores these possibilities further.
12
suffrage that allowed women to vote on (usually, local) school issues.15
We obtained state-level finance data and socioeconomic control variables used by Lott & Kenny
(1999).16 The data cover 48 contiguous states over the years 1870-1940. Table 6 summarizes key
variables for the 71-year panel of all 48 states. Educational spending averaged $3.71 per capita
over these years (in 1967 dollars), or about 22 percent of all state expenditures. We consider three
measures of the dosage of women’s suffrage. The first follows one specification of Lott & Kenny
(1999) and is defined as the number of years since full suffrage was granted to women, multiplied
by the percent of the over-21 population who were female in a given year. The second, following
Miller (2008), is a simple indicator variable equal to one for states with full suffrage. Within the
71-year, 48-state panel, 43 percent of state-by-year observations had full suffrage. Finally, we
consider an indicator for state-years where women were allowed partial suffrage, in that they were
permitted to vote on school issues. In the analyses to follow, we examine whether any of these
suffrage treatments affected state expenditures.
Specifically, we estimate the following:
ln(Yst ) = α + SU F F RAGEst β + Xst ψ + θs + α(t) + θs ∗ α(t) + θt + εst ,
(3)
where ln(Yst ) is the natural log of states’ per-capita public expenditures (total, or specific to education), SU F F RAGEst is one of the three measures of suffrage treatment, and Xst is a matrix
of socioeconomic controls summarized on Table 6. As above, α(t) controls for linear trends common to all units (here, states rather than counties in earlier sections), θs is a state fixed effect, and
θs ∗ α(t) controls for state-specific trends. In contrast to the county-level analysis of earlier sections, Equation 3 additionally controls for year fixed effects (θt ) since cross-state variation in the
timing of women’s suffrage is not collinear with any one year fixed effect.
Selected coefficients are listed in Table 7. Columns (1) and (4) list results for the first measure of suffrage dosage, the interaction of the number of years since suffrage was passed and the
share of over-21 adults who were female. Since this measure implicitly controls for post-suffrage
trends, we omit controls for α(t) and θs ∗ α(t). Columns (1) and (4) closely mirror the results of
one specification estimated by Lott & Kenny (1999, Table 4). Like them, we find that women’s
15
Years where states adopted partial, school suffrage rights are observed in Stapler (1917).
We thank Larry Kenny for graciously providing these data and associated documentation. State expenditure and
revenue data from 1870-1915 were originally provided to Lott and Kenny by John Wallis.
16
13
suffrage – interacted with the share of over-21 individuals who were female – is linked to significantly higher total statewide expenditures (Column (1)) but insignificantly different educational
expenditures (Column (4)).
Following Miller’s (2008) preferred model, we also test whether suffrage per se (i.e., a binary
indicator for state-years with full suffrage in place) is associated with higher spending (Columns
(2) and (5) of Table 7). A SU F F RAGEst variable represented by a simple binary function
of time may be subject to biases from underlying trends in spending, so we include controls
for state-specific time trends (θs ∗ α(t)) and nationwide time trends (α(t)) alongside the binary
SU F F RAGEst . Column (2) shows that states realized 15.3 percent higher public spending after
granting full voting rights to women, over and above state-specific, linear time trends. Educational
spending at the state level also increased following full suffrage, by 14.3 percent, but the point estimate is marginally significant and less than half of the analogous 33.6 percent estimate reported
in the first column of Table 2. Finally, we examine whether partial suffrage allowing women to
vote on school issues affected spending (Columns (3) and (6)). Coefficients listed in the third
row of Table 7 indicate moderate, marginally significant increases in total state spending following partial suffrage, but interestingly, no significant change in states’ educational spending. The
weak impact of partial suffrage suggests that full suffrage was much more important for advancing
public expenditures, at least at the state level. It remains to be seen if partial suffrage impacted
local public spending, because none of the states for which we currently have transcribed local
data extended partial voting rights to women prior to the Nineteenth Amendment. And since state
educational spending figures are not disaggregated by race, we cannot ascertain whether suffrage
had a differential impact on state spending for white schools.
To sum, our analysis of historic state finances indicates that women’s suffrage had – at best
– a small and weakly significant impact on state-level educational spending, despite evidence of
larger impacts on total education spending (including local support for public schools) discussed
in earlier sections.
14
7 Concluding Remarks
In the five Southeastern states we examine, county-level school spending averaged $360,600 (in
1983 dollars) over the years 1920-1940, 263 percent higher than average spending in 1910-1919.
Controlling for underlying trends in educational spending and decennial shifts in agriculture economies
and demographics, our first-pass estimates of the effect of suffrage suggest that extending the voting franchise yielded a 33.6 percent increase in educational spending, or 13 percent of the unconditional gain in spending after 1920. Our estimates of the impact of women’s suffrage on the
local provision of education does not appear to be spuriously related to unobserved shocks unique
to 1920. Spending gains were higher in white schools, consistent with white-black gaps in political enfranchisement in the Southeast, and higher in counties with better female representation
or younger median females around 1920. Furthermore, results link women’s suffrage to longer
term lengths, more teachers, and more schools, again more so for white schools than black. An
analysis of state expenditures indicates that full suffrage had a much weaker impact on educational
resources at the state level than at the county level, and that partial suffrage had no significant
impact on educational spending.
Our findings confirm expectations from economic models of intra-household bargaining and
political economy. The reaction of public finance allocations to the extension of women’s voting
rights provides strong support for the idea that suffrage shifted and increased the pivotal voter’s
preferences for public education. The adoption of women’s suffrage in the United States and the
subsequent impact of suffrage on public education represents a historic episode that should shape
our expectations for the relationship between women’s rights and human capital accumulation
in modern developing countries. As women gain electoral power, resources for public schools
improve. Card & Kreuger (1992a) show that for men born after 1920, gains in school quality
led to higher adult earnings. Our results suggest that part of these human capital gains should be
attributed to newly enfranchised women voters.
References
Atkin, D. (2009). Working for the future: Female factory work and child health in mexico. Working
Paper.
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Baumgardner, J. R. (1993). Tests of median voter and political support maximization models: the
case of federal/state welfare programs. Public Finance Review, 21(1), 48–83.
Black, D. (1948). On the rationale of group decision making. Journal of Political Economy, 56(1),
23–34.
Bowen, H. R. (1943). The interpretation of voting in the allocation of economic resources. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 58(1), 27–48.
Card, D., & Kreuger, A. B. (1992a). Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the
Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States. The Journal of Political Economy, 100,
1–40.
Card, D., & Kreuger, A. B. (1992b). School Quality and Black-White Relative Earnings: A Direct
Assessment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107.
Carruthers, C. K., & Wanamaker, M. H. (2012). Closing the gap? The effect of private philanthropy
on the provision of African-American schooling in the U.S. South.
Carter, S. B., Gartner, S. S., Haines, M. R., Olmstead, A. L., Sutch, R., & Wright, G. (Eds.) (2006).
Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present. Cambridge University
Press.
Doepke, M., & Tertilt, M. (2010). Does female empowerment promote economic development?
Working Paper.
Donohue, J. J., Heckman, J. J., & Todd, P. E. (2002). The Schooling of Southern Blacks: The
Roles of Legal Activism and Private Philanthropy, 1910-1960. Quarterly Journal of Economics,
117, 225–268.
Duflo, E. (2003). Grandmothers and granddaughters: Old-age pensions and intrahousehold allocation in south africa. World Bank Economic Review, 17(1), 1–25.
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of Economic History, 61(2), 263–92.
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Goldin, C., & Katz, L. F. (2009). Why the united stated led in education: Lessons from secondary
school expansion, 1910 to 1940. In D. Eltis, F. D. Lewis, & K. L. Sokoloff (Eds.) Human Capital
and Institutions: A Long-Run View. Cambridge University Press.
Harper, I. H. (Ed.) (1922). The History of Woman Suffrage: 1900-1920, vol. 5. New York, NY:
National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Husted, T. A., & Kenny, L. W. (1997). The effect of the expansion of the voting franchise on the
size of government. Journal of Political Economy, 105(1), 54–82.
Lott, J. R., & Kenny, L. W. (1999). Did women’s suffrage change the size and scope of government? Journal of Political Economy, 107, 1163–1198.
Miller, G. (2008). Women’s suffrage, political responsiveness, and child survival in american
history. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3), 1287 – 1327.
Pitt, M. M., & Khandker, S. R. (1998). The impact of group-based credit programs on poor households in bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter? Journal of Political Economy,
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Stapler, M. G. (Ed.) (1917). The Woman Suffrage Year Book. New York, NY: National Woman
Suffrage Publishing Company.
Thomas, D. (1990). Intra-household resource allocation: An inferential approach. The Journal of
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children. In Handbook of Population and Family Economics, Volume 1, (pp. 483–557). Elsevier.
17
Appendix 1: Trends in Segregated School Resources, 1910-1940
This study makes use of data on Southern public school districts between 1910 and 1940 in
five states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina), including statistics
on schools, teachers, students, and expenditures. These states were selected for their consistency
in reporting the educational resources of interest. While several researchers have used portions of
these data for specific projects, to our knowledge, our assembled dataset is unprecedented in its
size, scope, and depth. We have already used these data to estimate the impact of philanthropicallyfunded Rosenwald schools on public support for segregated schools (Carruthers & Wanamaker,
2012), and we expect these data to serve as a valuable foundation for future research. This section
describes the data in more detail and illustrates trends in white and African-American schooling
resources in the early 20th century.
Our primary sources of education input data are annual reports from state Superintendent Offices, Departments of Education, or equivalent governmental units. Measures of schooling resources reported separately for white and African-American schools typically include:
1. Enrollment, average daily attendance
2. Number of teachers overall
3. Expenditures
4. Teacher salaries
5. Number of schools
6. Average term lengths
7. Local tax revenues
We outsourced transcription of available statistics for these five states and assembled countyby-race panels for the years 1910-1940. Data availability is remarkably consistent across states
and years, with one important exception. North Carolina reported total spending but not spending
by race, a feature that is important for the present study. For this reason, our analysis examines the
effect of suffrage on school finances as well as other measures of schooling resources and capacity
(term length, number of schools, number of teachers, and teacher salaries) reported for all five
states.
We conduct an informed 0.5 percent audit of each transcribed variable. Specifically, for each
school statistic and each state, we regress transcribed data against county fixed effects and a
18
quadratic function of time, generating predicted values and residuals. We flag cells in the top
99.5 percent of residuals, in absolute value. This resulted in 814 flagged cells, for 16 variables
and just over 11,000 county-by-race rows of raw data. Then, our research assistant verified the
accuracy of each flagged cell by consulting the original scanned reports and fixed any discovered
errors. The realized error rate from these flags was 14.9 percent. We believe this to be an encouraging signal of the underlying fidelity of these data, considering that our audit focused on the top
0.5 percent of outliers within counties’ time series.
Other researchers have used portions of these data or statewide aggregations of historic education data to characterize pre-War school resources. We construct summary statistics comparable to
those that have been reported in earlier work. For instance, observe that Card & Kreuger (1992b)
assemble data on pupil-teacher ratios, annual teacher pay, and term length for black and white
schools from eighteen state-level reports, including the five states in our sample. Statistics in our
data closely track theirs. Card & Kreuger (1992b) document a convergence in white-black term
length ratio of 1.31 (1915) to 1.10 (1940) in eighteen segregated states, weighted by enrollment.
We find a convergence of 1.40 to 1.09 over the same period in our five Southern states, weighted
by total black and white enrollment. In related work, Card & Kreuger (1992a) document statewide
aggregates of pupil-teacher ratios and term lengths using the U.S. Department of Education series
Biennial Survey of Education. The earliest cohort they consider attended school between 1926 and
1947. We use our transcribed data on enrollment, teachers, and term lengths to construct statewide
average values of pupil-teacher ratios and term lengths over the years 1926-1940. Summary statistics are similar to those reported by Card & Kreuger (1992a). For Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
and the Carolinas, Card & Kreuger (1992a) report pupil-teacher ratios in the range of 33.7 - 35.9
and term lengths in the range of 154 - 161 (see their Table 1 on p. 12, first and fourth columns).
For these same states and a somewhat earlier window of time, we find pupil-teacher ratios of 32.2
- 37.7 and term lengths of 148.9 - 158.3. In addition, Donohue et al. (2002) utilize the same series
of Georgia Department of Education statistics that we use here, and their panel of county statistics
spans 1911 to 1960. Our transcribed data from 1910 - 1940 match theirs exactly.17
Table 8 contains a summary of data available for these five states. Particular variables were
sporadically missing from state reports, unsurprising given the 31-year window over which we
17
We thank the authors for providing a copy of their data.
19
collected data. Importantly, variables that are key to this analysis (enrollment and attendance,
number of teachers, expenditures, number of schools, and term length) were found throughout
much of the post-suffrage period.
Figure 5 illustrates trends in public schooling resources over the pre-integration 1910-1940
period, and Figures 6 - 10 illustrate trends for each state. To our knowledge, these figures are
the first of their kind for this phase of public education in the United States as county-level data
have not previously been assembled in an analytical form for multiple states or decades. Figure 5
illustrates means and confidence intervals for county-level enrollment, teachers, school buildings,
term lengths, teacher salaries, and total expenditures. Black students – both enrolled and attending
– per school-aged child were growing and black school-aged children per black teacher (i.e., the
potential teaching burden of each black teacher) declined over this period. The same was true
for white schools, but to a lesser degree, and we see meaningful convergence in these measures
of black and white schooling. The gap in term lengths narrowed slightly, but unevenly across
states. By contrast, we see no convergence in teacher salaries or expenditures per student. In fact,
the black-white gap in real spending per enrollee steadily widened between 1910 and 1940. The
number of white schools per 1,000 school-aged whites fell substantially prior to 1940. School
consolidation was a major development in this phase of U.S. public education. Small, woodframed community schoolhouses were supplanted by large, multi-story buildings with facilities
and teachers for different grade levels. Many of the annual reports we obtained for this study
devoted entire narrative sections to the progress of (largely white) school consolidation. As white
schools were consolidating throughout the region, black schools were steadily growing in number.
20
Tables and Figures
F IGURE 1: Educational spending and tax revenues, 1910-1940
40
60
80
100
120
140
I
Nationwide trends in per capita public educational expenditures (1982-1984 dollars)
1910
1920
1930
1940
year
Per capita public educational expenditures
0
20
40
60
80
II
Trends in per capita public educational expenditures in five Southern states (1983 dollars)
1910
1920
1930
1940
year
Per−capita educational spending
Per−capita school tax revenues
Source: Authors’ calculations, Carter et al. (2006) (panel
I), and numerous annual reports of states’ Department of
Education or equivalent office (panel II).
21
TABLE 1: Summary statistics: county schooling
expenditures and female populations, 1910-1940
Dependent variables
ln(educational expenditures)
ln(local tax transfers to schools)
ln(white educational expenditures)†
ln(black educational expenditures)†
White term length (days)
Black term length (days)
Number of white teachers
Number of black teachers
White average teacher salary
Black average teacher salary
Number of schools per 1,000 white minors
Number of schools per 1,000 black minors
(1)
(2)
Mean
Standard deviation
11.824
10.876
11.562
9.284
145.244
116.155
138.069
53.293
698.291
292.588
6.508
7.808
Suffrage treatment measures
Mean
Full suffrage (year≥ 1920)
Percent of adults who were female in 1920
Percent of white adults who were female in 1920
Median adult female age
Median white adult female age
0.677
49.57
49.276
33.522
34.128
Socioeconomic control variables
Mean
Crop value per capita
Percent of land devoted to agriculture
Black-white ratio
107.877
385.413
0.928
n (county-years)
10,698
(1.127)
(1.329)
(1.142)
(1.306)
(26.405)
(30.995)
(151.061)
(57.395)
(313.68)
(207.845)
(3.602)
(11.104)
Standard deviation
(0.467)
(2.202)
(2.216)
(1.405)
(1.347)
Standard deviation
(55.352)
(130.073)
(0.971)
Source: Authors’ calculations and numerous annual reports of five Southern states’
Department of Education or equivalent office. † Educational spending by race are
not available for North Carolina.
22
TABLE 2: Estimated changes in local educational spending and tax transfers
after the Nineteenth Amendment
Outcome
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Total spending
Tax revenues
White spending
Black spending
Year ≥ 1920
0.336***
(0.023)
0.311***
(0.031)
0.155***
(0.027)
0.012
(0.033)
Crop value per capita
-8.2E-4***
(3.E-04)
-9.3E-4*
(5.E-04)
-0.001***
(4.E-04)
-0.002***
(4.E-04)
Percent of land devoted to agriculture
-0.002***
(3.8E-04)
-0.006***
(5.6E-04)
-0.002***
(4.5E-04)
0.00228***
(4.4E-04)
Black-white ratio
0.248***
(0.072)
-0.281***
(0.100)
0.176**
(0.086)
0.441***
(0.083)
Observations
Number of counties
Adjusted R-squared
10,698
391
0.79
10,481
391
0.51
6,086
296
0.69
5,975
296
0.62
Notes: Coefficient estimates of Equation 1. Robust standard errors are in parentheses below each coefficient.
*** indicates statistical significance at 99% confidence (with respect to zero), ** at 95%, and * at 90%.
23
0
10
20
30
40
F IGURE 2: Per capita local educational spending by race, 1910-1940
1910
1920
1930
1940
year
Per−capita spending in white schools
Per−capita spending in black schools
Source: Authors’ calculations and numerous annual reports
of states’ Department of Education or equivalent office.
TABLE 3: Estimated changes in local educational spending and tax revenues after the
Nineteenth Amendment - by proxies for female turnout and/or female preferences for local
education
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Total spending
Tax revenues
White spending
Black spending
Year ≥ 1920 * percent of 1920 adults who are female
0.018**
(0.008)
-0.046***
(0.017)
0.023***
(0.008)
-4.3E-04
(0.009)
Year ≥ 1920 * percent of 1920 white adults who are female
0.011
(0.008)
-0.046***
(0.012)
0.012
(0.008)
-0.002
(0.008)
Year ≥ 1920 * median age of 1920 females
-0.046***
(0.018)
0.046*
(0.027)
-0.046**
(0.020)
-0.050**
(0.022)
Year ≥ 1920 * median age of 1920 white females
-0.047**
(0.021)
-0.028
(0.029)
-0.043*
(0.025)
-0.032
(0.021)
Outcome
Notes: Coefficient estimates of Equation 2 for school spending and educational revenues from local taxes. Robust standard errors are
in parentheses below each coefficient.
*** indicates statistical significance at 99% confidence (with respect to zero), ** at 95%, and * at 90%.
24
F IGURE 3: Trends in local educational resources, 1910-1940
Trends in the number of teachers
0
100
100
120
200
140
300
160
400
180
Trends in term lengths
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White average term length
Black average term length
White teachers
Black teachers
Trends in the number of schools per 1,000 under 17
2
200
400
4
600
800
6
1000
8
1200
Trends in average teacher salaries
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White average teacher salary
Black average teacher salary
White schools per 1,000 under 17
Black schools per 1,000 under 17
Source: Authors’ calculations and numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education
or equivalent office.
TABLE 4: Estimated changes in local segregated educational resources after the Nineteenth
Amendment
(1)
Outcome
(2)
Term length
AfricanWhite
American
(3)
(4)
Number of teachers
AfricanWhite
American
(5)
(6)
(7)
Average teacher salaries
AfricanWhite
American
Year ≥ 1920
8.34***
(0.82)
4.88***
(0.99)
22.59***
(1.86)
1.24**
(0.56)
-1.62
(9.57)
Crop value per capita
-0.06***
(0.01)
-0.02*
(0.02)
0.05***
(0.01)
-0.02*
(0.01)
Percent of land devoted to agriculture
-0.04**
(0.02)
0.10***
(0.02)
-0.14***
(0.03)
0.02*
(0.01)
Black-white ratio
5.36**
(2.66)
5.57
(3.53)
11.27***
(3.14)
8.08***
(2.53)
9.46
(51.18)
Observations
Number of counties
Adjusted R-squared
10,108
391
0.65
10,053
390
0.66
10,827
391
0.85
10,487
390
0.90
10,426
391
0.67
Number of schools
AfricanWhite
American
-51.79***
(8.51)
0.344***
(0.084)
-0.444**
(0.191)
-0.64***
(0.15)
-0.23***
(0.07)
0.010***
(0.001)
-0.001
(0.001)
-0.37**
(0.18)
0.92***
(0.12)
0.001
(0.002)
0.002
(0.002)
-7.25
(13.29)
0.398
(0.346)
-1.504***
(0.307)
10,175
390
0.53
10,030
391
0.80
9,643
389
0.49
Notes: Coefficient estimates of Equation 1 for school resources. Standard errors are in parentheses below each coefficient.
** indicates statistical significance at 99% confidence (with respect to zero), ** at 95%, and * at 90%.
25
(8)
TABLE 5: Estimated changes in local segregated educational resources after the Nineteenth
Amendment - by proxies for female turnout and/or female preferences for local education
(1)
Outcome
(2)
(3)
Term length
AfricanWhite
American
(4)
Number of teachers
AfricanWhite
American
(5)
(6)
Average teacher salaries
AfricanWhite
American
(7)
(8)
Number of schools
AfricanWhite
American
Year ≥ 1920 * percent of 1920 adults
who are female
-0.038
(0.304)
-0.986**
(0.422)
0.128
(0.679)
-0.499*
(0.279)
3.043
(3.729)
3.117
(4.012)
-0.021
(0.047)
-0.018
(0.046)
Year ≥ 1920 * percent of 1920 white
adults who are female
-0.247
(0.244)
-1.070***
(0.349)
0.955*
(0.538)
-0.431
(0.312)
-1.590*
(3.729)
-5.324
(2.919)
0.021
(0.039)
-0.094
(0.064)
Year ≥ 1920 * median age of 1920
females
0.346
(0.489)
-1.397**
(0.663)
-4.395***
(1.333)
-0.672*
(0.384)
-6.085
(5.741)
-3.533
(5.337)
0.152**
(0.059)
-0.017
(0.127)
Year ≥ 1920 * median age of 1920
white females
0.421
(0.552)
-1.977***
(0.727)
-4.816***
(1.382)
-0.717*
(0.412)
-2.738
(5.632)
1.005
(6.118)
0.136**
(0.062)
-0.008
(0.103)
Notes: Coefficient estimates of Equation 2 for school resources. Standard errors are in parentheses below each coefficient.
** indicates statistical significance at 99% confidence (with respect to zero), ** at 95%, and * at 90%.
0
10
Number of states
20
30
40
50
F IGURE 4: Number of states with full suffrage rights for women
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
year
Number of states with full suffrage
Number of states with school suffrage
Source: Authors’ calculations. Full suffrage dates from
Lott & Kenny (1999), Table 1. School suffrage dates from
Stapler (1917).
26
TABLE 6: State expenditures and socioeconomic characteristics,
1870-1940
Dependent variables
(1)
(2)
Mean
Standard deviation
ln(total expenditures)
ln(educational expenditures
2.816
1.31
Suffrage treatment measures
Mean
Years since full suffrage × % 21 and older who are female
Full suffrage (0,1)
School or full suffrage (0,1)
(0.963)
(1.212)
Standard deviation
0.206
0.43
0.584
Socioeconomic control variables
Mean
Poll tax (0,1)
Literacy test (0,1)
Secret ballot (0,1)
ln(population density)
rural population (%)
black population (%)
population over 65 (%)
working female population (%)
workforce in manufacturing (%)
illiterate (%)
foreign-born (%)
real manufacturing wage
0.23
0.275
0.711
3.429
0.619
0.109
0.045
0.283
0.119
0.099
0.123
2289.59
(0.238)
(0.495)
(0.493)
Standard deviation
(0.421)
(0.447)
(0.454)
(1.536)
(0.215)
(0.173)
(0.017)
(0.1)
(0.094)
(0.113)
(0.094)
(1325.631)
Source: Lott & Kenny (1999), Stapler (1917), and authors’ calculations. n = 1,882 state-years
with non-missing total spending data and 1,825 with non-missing educational spending data.
TABLE 7: Estimated changes in state expenditures after women’s suffrage
(1)
Outcome
Years since full suffrage
× % 21 and older who are female
(2)
Total spending
(4)
(5)
-0.132
(0.178)
0.153***
(0.052)
School or partial suffrage
0.143*
(0.086)
0.078*
(0.041)
No
1,881
0.82
(6)
Educational spending
0.220**
(0.110)
Full suffrage
Controls for time trends
Observations
Adjusted R-squared
(3)
Yes
1,881
0.86
Yes
1,881
0.86
0.036
(0.068)
No
1,827
0.71
Yes
1,827
0.78
Yes
1,827
0.78
Notes: Selected coefficient estimates from Equation 3 for state-level public expenditures. Standard errors are
in parentheses below each coefficient. Additional controls include socioeconomic variables listed in Table 6,
state fixed effects, and year fixed effects.
*** indicates statistical significance at 99% confidence (with respect to zero), ** at 95%, and * at 90%.
27
TABLE 8: Summary of Data Availability in State Education Reports, 1910-1940
Enrollment, average daily attendance
Number of teachers
Expenditures by race
Total expenditures
Teacher salaries
Number of school buildings
Term length
Local tax revenue
Number of counties
Enrollment, average daily attendance
Number of teachers
Expenditures by race
Total expenditures
Teacher salaries
Number of school buildings
Term length
Local tax revenue
Number of counties
Alabama
Georgia1
Louisiana2
all years
all years except 1921
missing 1911-20
all years
all years
missing 1929-31
all years
all years
all years
all years
missing 1936, 1938
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
missing 1910, 1912
all years
missing 1910-1925
all years
missing 1923, 1926, 1927
missing 1928, 1932-1933, 1936-1938
missing 1910-1914, 1926
all years
67
64
North Carolina
South Carolina
missing 1920
all years
not available
all years
all years
missing 1920-22
missing 1920
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
all years
100
46
Notes: 1 Georgia issued report for every year from 1910-1922. Thereafter, reports were issued for even-numbered years only.
No Georgia data are available for odd-numbered years between 1922 and 1940. 2 No Louisiana data are available for 1922. The
state did not issue a report in that year.
28
F IGURE 5: Education Statistics in Five Southeastern States, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.25
.45
.3
.5
.35
.55
.4
.6
.45
.5
.65
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
50
3
4
100
5
150
6
7
200
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Length of term by race and year
200
100
400
120
600
140
800
160
1000
180
Average teacher salary by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
0
20
40
60
Real spending per student enrolled by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
year
spending per White student enrolled (1925 dollars)
spending per African−American student enrolled
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
29
F IGURE 6: Education Statistics in Alabama, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.2
.3
.4
.3
.5
.4
.6
.5
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
3
50
4
5
100
6
7
8
150
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
1940
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Average teacher salary by race and year
Length of term by race and year
80
200
100
400
120
600
140
800
160
1000
1930
year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
10
20
30
40
50
60
Real spending per student enrolled by race and year
1920
1925
1930
year
1935
1940
spending per White student enrolled (1925 dollars)
spending per African−American student enrolled
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
30
F IGURE 7: Education Statistics in Georgia, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.25
.4
.3
.5
.35
.4
.6
.45
.5
.7
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
3
50
4
100
5
6
150
7
8
200
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Length of term by race and year
200
110
120
400
130
600
140
800
150
1000
160
Average teacher salary by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
0
10
20
30
40
Real spending per student enrolled by race and year
1910
1915
1920
1925
1930
1935
year
spending per White student enrolled (1925 dollars)
spending per African−American student enrolled
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
31
F IGURE 8: Education Statistics in Louisiana, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.2
.25
.3
.25
.3
.35
.4
.35
.4
.45
.5
.45
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
1930
year
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
0
2.5
3
100
3.5
200
4
300
4.5
5
400
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
1930
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Average teacher salary by race and year
Length of term by race and year
0
100
120
500
140
1000
160
180
1500
1940
year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1915
1920
year
1925
1930
1935
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
20
40
60
80
Real spending per student enrolled by race and year
1925
1930
1935
1940
year
spending per White student enrolled (1925 dollars)
spending per African−American student enrolled
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
32
F IGURE 9: Education Statistics in North Carolina, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.5
.3
.55
.4
.6
.5
.6
.65
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
2
60
80
4
100
6
120
8
140
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Length of term by race and year
100
200
400
120
600
140
800
160
1000
Average teacher salary by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
33
F IGURE 10: Education Statistics in South Carolina, 1910-1940
Attendance by race and year
.3
.45
.5
.35
.4
.55
.45
.6
.5
.65
Enrollment by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
White enrollment per population under 17
African−American enrollment per population under 17
White attendance per population under 17
African−American attendance per population under 17
Number of schools per 1,000 under 17 by race and year
3
50
4
5
100
6
7
8
150
Population under 17 per teacher by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
White population under 17 per teacher
African−American population under 17 per teacher
1940
number of White schools per 1,000
number of African−American schools per 1,000
Average teacher salary by race and year
Length of term by race and year
50
200
400
100
600
800
150
1000
200
1200
1930
year
1910
1920
1930
1940
1910
1920
year
1930
1940
year
real average salary per White teacher (1925 dollars)
real average salary per African−American teacher
White length of term in days
African−American length of term in days
0
20
40
60
80
Real spending per student enrolled by race and year
1910
1920
1930
1940
year
spending per White student enrolled (1925 dollars)
spending per African−American student enrolled
Source: Authors’ calculations, numerous annual reports of states’ Department of Education or
equivalent office. Figures illustrate third-degree local polynomials of county-level statistics by
year and race, with data weighted by the county-level population of white or black individuals
under the age of 17.
34