Population responses to the 1976 South Dakota drought: Insights for wider drought migration research

Abstract

AbstractDroughts on the North American Great Plains once led to elevated levels of out‐migration from rural areas. Large‐scale drought migration has not been observed since the 1950s due to changes in land management and agricultural systems that lessened farm‐level vulnerability to drought. Have droughts had less observable population impacts in subsequent decades? Here, we present findings from an investigation of an unusually severe, localised drought that struck eastern South Dakota in 1976 and caused staggering financial losses to farms. County‐level population and net migration rates show an anomalous increase of migration into drought‐affected counties by male migrants in the age group 30–35 years, likely being return migrants coming to help on the family farm. Newspaper archives and interviews with retired farmers suggest that few people moved away during the 1976 drought; most adapted instead by selling off their livestock herds and taking on greater debt. However, a commonly expressed view is that the drought ‘softened up’ area farmers, increasing their vulnerability to interest rates that quadrupled in the three following years. The early 1980s saw high rates of farm failures, unemployment and population decline in counties that experienced the worst impacts of the 1976 drought, suggesting the drought had a lag effect on population patterns. The findings from this case study are consistent with the ‘lessening hypothesis’ that social and technological innovations reduce economic and population impacts of recurrent climatic risks but elevate vulnerability to less frequent, unusually severe events.