State Per Capita Income Convergence Since 1950: Sharecropping's Demise and Other Influences*

Prevailing theories wrongly attribute post‐1950 convergence of state per capita incomes to (1) neoclassical adjustment mechanisms, (2) institutional sclerosis, and (3) southern industrialization. But convergence‐essentially a weakening of southern poverty–resulted mainly from the South's overcoming its legacy of slavery: the sharecropper‐tenant system, agricultural dependence, high black population percentages, poor education, and low wage rates. Sharecropping was the dominant feature; abject poverty among sharecroppers dragged southern income to its knees. Sharecropping's collapse and attendant South‐to‐North migration affected the legacy's other features in ways that raised income. Manufacturing growth and transport improvements caused relative income in the West to decline .