Franklin Roosevelt, Federal Spending, and the Postwar Southern Economic Rebound

Abstract

Franklin Roosevelt publicly stated his devotion to the American South and pledged to help reform the region’s laggard economy. However, Southern states received significantly fewer federal expenditures per capita, both during the New Deal of the 1930s and the military emergency of the 1940s. This article investigates economic, political, and strategic reasons for this result. Additionally, we apply a public goods perspective to New Deal and World War II spending and propose that lower levels of per capita spending in the South do not necessarily translate into a smaller impact of that spending.