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Title: Racial Diversity, Electoral Preferences, and the Supply of Policy: the Great Migration and Civil Rights

Author(s): Alvaro Calderon, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini

Publication Date: January 2020

Keyword(s): civil rights, diversity, Great Migration and race

Programme Area(s): Economic History, Labour Economics and Public Economics

Abstract: Between 1940 and 1970, during the second Great Migration, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States. The Great Migration coincided with the rise of the civil rights movement, whose success marked a key turning point in the history of race relations in the US. In this paper, we show that these two events are causally linked. Predicting Black in-migration with a version of the shift-share instrument, we find that the Great Migration increased support for the Democratic Party and encouraged pro-civil rights activism, among both Black and (some) white voters. We also show that Black in-migration induced northern Congress members to more actively promote civil rights legislation. However, these average effects mask a steep rise in polarization. While the 1940s saw the replacement of moderate Republicans with increasingly liberal Democrats, the 1950s were characterized by a right-wing shift within the GOP. Overall, our findings suggest that, under certain conditions, cross-race coalitions can emerge, but also that higher support for racial equality may coincide with higher political polarization.

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Bibliographic Reference

Calderon, A, Fouka, V and Tabellini, M. 2020. 'Racial Diversity, Electoral Preferences, and the Supply of Policy: the Great Migration and Civil Rights'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14318