| Abstract: | Between 1940 and 1960 the Southeast experienced both economic and demographic revolutions. They were interrelated in many ways. Agriculture was mechanized and reorganized making millions of farmers and farm laborers surplus. The natural assets of the region were developed and industry grew more rapidly than in other regions. There were marked changes in the labor force, a rapid increase in the proportion of women employed and a decrease in the proportion of Negroes. The level of family income rose faster than in other regions.Five and three quarter million persons were transferred from the farm population. A net of 2.7 million left the region and 3 million were absorbed in nonfarm areas within the region. In 1960 52 percent of the population was in cities. Increase was especially fast in metropolitan urban areas, mostly in suburbs. There were also substantial increases in the rural nonfarm areas. Small cities as a group showed no net in-migration. Among the net migrants out of the region the ratio was 4 colored to1 white.The age and sex distribution was warped, especially below age 30, slowing down the early marriage rate and the crude birth rate.The projection of the trend which was being followed in the early 1960s indicates that the regional rate of increase may overtake that of the rest of the country, being particularly rapid in the young adult and adolescent ages.For the purposes of this study the Southeast includes: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. These were originally the heaviest cotton producing states and the heart of the sharecropping area where the reorganization of the economy was particularly disruptive. |
