Paige Elizabeth Montrose

Research

Job Market Paper

Without Deliberate Speed: The Effects of Southern Out-migration on School Desegregation

Abstract: In this paper, I study the effects of emigration on local racialized policies by leveraging the timing of the second wave of the Great Migration in the U.S. with federal school desegregation orders. In the 1940s–1960s, millions of white and Black southerners left the South, especially from counties that were more rural, agriculture-dependent, and racially violent. Subsequently, school districts resisted desegregation orders for decades following Brown v. Board (1954). By adapting the shift-share IV to use plausibly exogenous destination “pull” factors, I show that white out-migration caused schools to desegregate later. This effect was especially strong where the Black share grew and is driven by: (1) the most racially progressive Southerners leaving and (2) diminished capacity for political activism. Thus, emigration affects public policy via shifts in the electorate’s makeup and its preferences.

Working Papers

Abstract

After the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), there was an unprecedented increase in women’s political mobilization as the temperance movement gained traction across the United States. Historians suggest women’s accelerated involvement in the political sphere was rooted in part by elevated rates of domestic violence and unemployment due to Civil War veterans’ use of alcohol to cope with the physical and psychological battle wounds. This paper uses randomness in battle intensity to identify the causal effect of Civil War veteran disability on women’s labor force participation and temperance activism. Our results indicate that a wife or daughter of a disabled veteran was up to 20% more likely to join the labor force by 1880 relative to wives and daughters of veterans who exited the Union Army regularly. Counties with high disability rates were also more likely to establish a chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union within a decade of the organization’s establishment. Our findings imply that women’s early political mobilization and labor force participation were important legacies of the Civil War.

Abstract

This project explores how female homesteaders leveraged land ownership to achieve social, political, and economic advancement. Using archival sources, I build a comprehensive dataset of successful homestead claims from 1862 to 1930. This new dataset includes claimant details that can be matched to the census and location descriptions that can be matched to their actual locations. I investigate individual long-run outcomes after homesteading, such as labor force participation, marriage patterns, and fertility, as well as broader impacts on county-level outcomes like women’s club formation, voter turnout, government petitioning, and legislative reforms. By linking economic independence to societal change, this project provides new insights into the long-run effects of land ownership on women’s empowerment during a transformative period in U.S. history.

Works in Progress

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