The South Will Fall Again: The South as Leader and Laggard in Economic Growth

It is well known that since World War II, and especially since the early 1960s, the South has enjoyed more economic growth than the United States as a whole, and very much more than the declining Northeast and older Middle West. In this short period the South shed its almost century-old reputation as much the poorest region of the country and one which continually suffered a substantial emigration of its people to other regions, and gained fame for leading the pace of economic advance and attracting a substantial net immigration from other parts of the country. Why has the South grown so much more rapidly than most of the rest of the country in recent decades? This is a question of some importance, among other reasons because there is no way of making an informed judgement about whether this advance will continue until we know its causes.