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Frontier Culture: the Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States∗

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Frontier Culture: the Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States∗ Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of “Rugged Individualism” in the United States∗ Samuel Bazziy Martin Fiszbeinz Mesay Gebresilassex Boston University Boston University Boston University NBER and CEPR and NBER June 2018 Abstract The presence of a westward-moving frontier of settlement shaped early U.S. history. In 1893, the his- torian Frederick Jackson Turner famously argued that the American frontier fostered individualism. We investigate the Frontier Thesis and identify its long-run implications for culture and politics. We track the frontier throughout the 1790–1890 period and construct a novel, county-level measure of to- tal frontier experience (TFE). Historically, frontier locations had distinctive demographics and greater individualism. Long after the closing of the frontier, counties with greater TFE exhibit more perva- sive individualism and opposition to redistribution. This pattern cuts across known divides in the U.S., including urban–rural and north–south. We provide suggestive evidence on the roots of fron- tier culture: selective migration, an adaptive advantage of self-reliance, and perceived opportunities for upward mobility through effort. Overall, our findings shed new light on the frontier’s persistent legacy of rugged individualism. Keywords: Culture, Individualism, Preferences for Redistribution, American Frontier, Persistence JEL Codes: D72, H2, N31, N91, O43, P16 ∗We thank Romain Wacziarg for a helpful discussion of the paper at the NBER Summer Institute. We also thank Alberto Alesina, Quamrul Ashraf, Jeremy Atack, Michael Clemens, William Collins, Klaus Desmet, Benjamin Enke, Marcel Fafchamps, James Feigenbaum, Ray Fisman, Oded Galor, Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, Paola Giuliano, Bob Margo, Nathan Nunn, Omer¨ Ozak,¨ Daniele Paserman, Nico Voigtlaender, John Wallis, and David Weil, as well as seminar participants at ASREC, Boston Univer- sity, Bowdoin, Brown, the Deep-Rooted Factors in Comparative Development Conference at Brown, Georgetown, Harvard, the NBER Political Economy Summer Institute, the NBER Development of the American Economy Summer Institute and Spring Meeting, New Economic School Political Economy and Development Workshop, Northwestern, Stanford, UdeSA, University of Houston, UPenn, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt, and the Second Workshop on Macro-Development, for helpful com- ments. Yeonha Jung, Max McDevitt, and Huiren Tan provided excellent research assistance. All errors are our own. yDepartment of Economics. 270 Bay State Rd., Boston, MA 02215. Email: [email protected]. zDepartment of Economics. 270 Bay State Rd., Boston, MA 02215. Email: fi[email protected]. xDepartment of Economics. 270 Bay State Rd., Boston, MA 02215. Email: [email protected]. 1 Introduction Rapid westward expansion marked the early history of the United States. According to the influential historian Frederick Jackson Turner, the presence of “a continually advancing frontier line” at the “edge of free land” strongly influenced American culture (Turner, 1893). The frontier fostered the development of distinctive cultural traits, including individualism and opposition to government intervention. The combination of these two traits characterizes “rugged individualism,” a term popularized by Herbert Hoover in his 1928 presidential campaign.1 This paper shows that the American frontier shaped a culture of rugged individualism that persisted throughout time. First, using Census data from the 18th and 19th century, we establish the distinctive demographics and higher levels of individualism that historically characterized frontier locations. Then, using modern survey and Census data, we show that locations exposed to the frontier for a longer pe- riod historically exhibit higher contemporary levels of individualism, lower desired and actual levels of redistribution, and stronger opposition to government regulation. Finally, using linked Census records, we document empirical patterns that point to the origins of frontier culture. Frontier individualism is partly but not entirely explained by selective migration. Frontier conditions favored individualism through higher socioeconomic returns, and they created expectations of high income growth through effort, which fueled opposition to government intervention. To understand the contemporaneous and long-run effects of the frontier, we revisit the classic Frontier Thesis through the lens of modern political economy and social psychology. In our conceptual frame- work, the significance of the frontier can be explained by three factors. First, frontier locations attracted individualists able to thrive in harsh conditions. Second, frontier conditions—isolation and low popula- tion density—further cultivated self-reliance, and they offered favorable prospects for upward mobility through effort, nurturing hostility to redistribution. Finally, frontier conditions shaped local culture at a critical juncture, thus generating persistent effects. We determine the position of the frontier and track its evolution over time using population data from the Census and applying Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. Following Turner’s classic essay and the Progress of the Nation report from the 1890 Census, we define the frontier line as the line at which population density dropped below two people per square mile. We identify the frontier as comprised of counties with low population density in close proximity to the frontier line. This time- varying measure of frontier status is consistent with Turner’s view of the frontier as “a form of society” rather than a fixed area. We measure total frontier experience as the time spent on the frontier between 1790 and 1890. This precise and comprehensive measure of frontier history provides, to our knowledge, the first measure of the duration of frontier exposure at a fine geographic level. This measure makes it possible to characterize previously unidentified variation within and across states. Consistent with historical narratives, we find systematic evidence on the demographic and cultural 1The element of anti-statism in rugged individualism makes it different from notions of individualism that point to weak fam- ily ties, loose kinship networks, or low levels of communalism (see Alesina and Giuliano, 2014; Enke, 2017, 2018, respectively). The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines rugged individualism as “the practice or advocacy of individualism in social and economic relations emphasizing personal liberty and independence, self-reliance, resourcefulness, self-direction of the individual, and free competition in enterprise.” According to Wikipedia, rugged individualism “refers to the idea that indi- viduals should be able to help themselves out and that the government does should not involve itself in the economic lives of people or the nation in general.” 1 distinctiveness of frontier locations. Frontier settlers were disproportionately male, prime-age, and foreign-born. These distinctive traits display strong associations with each of the two defining features of the frontier—sparse population and isolation. Using semiparametric regressions, we identify sharp structural breaks in these traits close to the density cutoff defining the frontier line in historical accounts. Moreover, event study specifications show how these demographics evolve as counties exit the frontier. Frontier locations also had sharply higher levels of individualism, as reflected in the prevalence of infrequent children’s names. This result holds for several alternative ways of measuring infrequency and restricting to children with native-born parents or grandparents. The informational content of given names has been emphasized in economics (e.g., Abramitzky et al., 2016; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Fryer and Levitt, 2004; Olivetti and Paserman, 2015) as well as psychology and sociology (e.g., Ger- rit and Onland, 2011; Gureckis and Goldstone, 2009; Lieberson and Bell, 1992). We borrow our names- based measure of individualism from social psychologists, who note that individualistic types are prone to give their children infrequent names, reflecting a desire to stand out, as opposed to common names, reflecting a desire to fit in (Twenge et al., 2010). Names have the crucial advantage of allowing us to measure individualism historically. Furthermore, name choices are particularly useful for studying cul- tural persistence as they represent a primordial act of cultural transmission by parents, which can have lasting effects on children’s identity and behavior (Nelson and Simmons, 2007; Yadin, 2016). We investigate the long-run effects of frontier exposure on culture using our novel, county-level measure of total frontier experience (TFE). First, we show that TFE positively correlates with infrequent naming patterns several generations after the closing of the frontier. Second, we find a robust association of TFE with opposition to redistribution and public spending based on contemporary surveys capturing different notions of government intervention. TFE is also associated with actual policy differences such as lower property tax rates. The results are robust to state fixed effects as well as geoclimatic controls including area, latitude and longitude, rainfall and temperature, distance to waterways, and potential agricultural productivity. These long-run differences in preferences have translated into stronger contemporary support for the Republican Party. Each decade of TFE is associated with 3.5 percent more votes for Republican can- didates in presidential elections since
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