The Decline of the Midwest, Again

Some years ago I wrote here about how prominent the Midwest was in American culture in the early twentieth century--as a subject of literature, for example--and how it has been less conspicuous that way since.

Certainly there has been a correlation between the Midwest's representation, and real, material changes. Recently checking the numbers I found that circa 1900 35 percent of the "resident population" of the continental U.S. (the "Lower Forty-Eight") lived in the twelve states the U.S. Census Bureau designates as making up the Midwest. The figure has trended downward since, such that if it was still 30 percent in the 1940s, after 2018 it slipped below the 21 percent mark.

It is a big drop, and one might add, has testified to economic decline. The time series' on Gross Domestic Product by state, alas, do not go back very far, but we do have figures for personal income going back to 1929. From 1929 to 1979 per capita income in the Midwest averaged 101 percent of the U.S. total, with the figure especially high in the 1940s and early 1950s--105 percent in 1947-1953, and still 101 percent in 1977-1979. However, the trend since then has been steadily downward as well, with per capita personal income in the Midwest 94 percent of the U.S. figure in 2016-2023.

In short, the Midwest as a whole went from being relatively rich to being relatively poor, with the shift arguably the greater because it was relatively rich in a time when the country was booming, and relatively poor when the country was stagnating or even declining. One should also note that the average conceals important disparities. The more agricultural states--a Kansas, for example--were historically poorer, and if still poorer than average by this metric, may be said to be less so. However, those states most associated with manufacturing may be said to have suffered especially severe changes of fortune. In 1929-1979 Michigan's per capita personal income was 107 percent that of the national figure, and in 1941-1955 actually 111 percent in 1977-1979 its per capita personal income was still a relatively high 104 percent. However, the state has suffered a long decline since, its figure 88 percent in 2006-2023, and 87 percent in 2021-2023, the state gone from being relatively rich to relatively poor by regional as well as national standards. The situation is comparable in Ohio, which was richer than average until the mid-1960s, with a per capita personal income 106 percent the national figure in 1929-1979, and 107 percent the national figure in 1941-1955, but slipped below the 94 percent mark about the turn of the century, so as to average 90 percent of the national figure in 2006-2023, and 89 percent in 2018-2023.

Indeed, checking the numbers only confirms what many have observed but which many also prefer to deny, namely that the decline of the country's manufacturing base has hit this region, and particularly its more industrialized states, in ways from which they have not recovered, and indeed, which may be getting worse in spite of the "post-industrial" and "New Economy" drivel so beloved of the neoliberal crowd that, in spite of the hopes of some of their critics, still remains in command of the political platforms and still establishes the "conventional wisdom" about economic matters.