Laura Salisbury

Patronage Politics and the Development of the Welfare State: Confederate Pensions in the American South

Beginning in the 1880s, southern states introduced pensions for Confederate veterans and widows. They continued to expand these programs through the 1920s, while states outside the region were introducing cash transfer programs for workers, poor mothers, and the elderly. Using legislative documents, application records for Confederate pensions, and county-level census and electoral data, we argue that political considerations guided the enactment and distribution of these pensions. We show that Confederate pensions programs were introduced and funded during years in which Democratic gubernatorial candidates were threatened at the ballot box. Moreover, we offer evidence that pensions were disbursed to counties in which these candidates had lost ground to candidates from alternative parties.

Local Information, Income Segregation, and Geographic Mobility

Abstract We develop a model of migration in the face of geographic information asymmetries. Firms from a given city observe whether or not a local worker is a member of a disadvantaged local community, a negative indicator of productivity, but do not have this information for migrants to this city. With this knowledge, workers must decide whether to migrate and obscure information about their community of origin. Our model generates results consistent with recent trends in intergenerational mobility and internal migration as well as new predictions about the relationship between migrant outcomes and income segregation. We confirm these predictions using data from the U.S. census.