Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:07:46.846Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rural Nonfarm Households: Leaving the Farm and the Retirement of Older Men, 1860–1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Jon R. Moen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The fall in the labor force participation rate of older men in the United States has been dramatic. In 1860 approximately 76% of men 65 and older were in the labor force. Today less than 20% work. Much of the decline has been explained in terms of a shift from agricultural occupations to manufacturing or industrial occupations, where participation historically has been lower at older ages. Participation rates, however, appear to have been constant in both farm and urban households through 1930, thus challenging the thesis that industrialization and urbanization were causes of the fall in the participation rate of older men.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 55 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atack, Jeremy, and Bateman, Fred (1987) To Their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North. Ames: Iowa State University Press.Google Scholar
Bancroft, Gertrude (1958) The American Labor Force: Its Growth and Changing Composition. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Bateman, Fred, and Foust, James (1974) “A sample of rural households selected from the 1860 manuscript census.” Agricultural History 48: 75–93.Google Scholar
Bowen, William G., and Aldrich Finegan, T. (1969) The Economics of Labor Force Participation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Conzen, Kathleen (1985) “Peasant pioneers,” in Hahn, Steven and Prude, Jonathan (eds.) The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Costa, Dora (1992) “Health, pensions, occupational class, and retirement in turn of the century America.” Manuscript, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Curtí, Merle (1969) The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Durand, John (1948) The Labor Force in the United States, 1890–1960. New York: Social Science Research Council.Google Scholar
Folbre, Nancy (1993) “Women's informal market work in Massachusetts, 1875–1920.” Social Science History 17:135–60.Google Scholar
Friedberger, Mark (1983) “The farm family and the inheritance process: Evidence from the corn belt.” Agricultural History 57: 1–13.Google Scholar
Galenson, David (1987) “Economic determinants of the age at leaving home: Evidence from the lives of nineteenth century New England manufacturers.” Social Science History 11: 355–78.Google Scholar
Graham, Stephen (1980) 1900: Public Use Sample User's Handbook. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (#7825).Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian (1986) Urban Elders. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, and Rotondo, Frances (1991) “Industrialization, the family economy, and the economic status of the American elderly.” Social Science History 15: 337–62.Google Scholar
Haber, Carole, and Gratton, Brian (1992) In the Steps of the Old: A Social History of the American Elderly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harevan, Tamara (1982) Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Long, Clarence (1958) The Labor Force under Changing Income and Employment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon (1987a) “The labor of older Americans: A comment.” Journal of Economic History 57: 761–67.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon (1987b) “Essays on the labor force and labor force participation rates of older men: The United States from 1860 to 1950.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon (1988a) “The shifting structure of occupations and the effect on the labor force participation rate of American males, 1860 to 1980.” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Working Paper #88-3.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon (1988b) “From gainful employment to labor force: Definitions and a new estimate of work rates of American males, 1960 to 1980.” Historical Methods 21: 149–59.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon (1992) “A note on the importance of the Civil War pension.” Manuscript, University of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Ostergren, Robert (1981) “Land and family in rural immigrant communities.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 71: 400–411.Google Scholar
Pedersen, Harald (1950) “A cultural evaluation of the family farm concept.” Land Economics 26: 52–64.Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger, and Richard, Sutch (1986) “The labor of older Americans: Retirement on and off the job, 1870–1937.” Journal of Economic History 56: 1–30.Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger, and Richard, Sutch (1989) “The trend in the rate of labor force participation of older men, 1870–1930: A reply to Moen.” Journal of Economic History 59:170–83.Google Scholar
Salamon, Sonya, and O'Reilly, Shirley (1979) “Family land and developmental cycles among Illinois farmers.” Rural Sociology 44: 525–42.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Strong, Michael, et al 1910: Public Use Sample User's Guide. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (#9166).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census: 1930 (1932) General Report: Statistics by Subject, vol. 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census: 1940 (1943) Population: Characteristics by Age, vol. 4, pt. 1. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Seventeenth Census: 1950 (1953) Special Reports: Employment and Personal Characteristics. Report P-E, No. 1A. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Seventeenth Census: 1950 (1954) Housing. Vol. 2, Nonfarm Housing Character istics. Pt. 1, United States and Divisions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twentieth Census: 1980 (1983) Characteristics of the Population. Vol. 1, ch. C, General Social and Economic Characteristics. Pt. 1, U.S. Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1910: Public Use Sample (1989) User's Guide. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (#9166).Google Scholar
U.S. Census Office, Twelfth Census: 1900 (1902) Population, pt. 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Winters, Donald (1978) Farmers without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in Nineteenth Century Iowa. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar