Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/300463 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 24-399
Publisher: 
W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, MI
Abstract: 
This paper studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security reasons during the United States' industrial mobilization for World War II. Wartime plant construction had large and persistent impacts on local development, characterized by an expansion of relatively high-wage manufacturing employment throughout the postwar era. These benefits were shared by incumbent residents; we find men born before WWII in counties where plants were built earned $1,200 (in 2020 dollars) or 2.5 percent more per year in adulthood relative to those born in counterfactual comparison regions, with larger benefits accruing to children of lower-income parents. The balance of evidence suggests that these individuals benefited primarily from the local expansion of higher-wage jobs to which they had access as adults, rather than because of developmental effects from exposure to better environments during childhood.
Subjects: 
public investment
industrial mobilization
counties
manufacturing
local development
long-run earnings
intergenerational effects
WWII
JEL: 
J31
J62
H56
R11
R53
O25
N42
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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