Where Is the Rust Belt?
Mapping the Rust

Let’s start with manufacturing. I have 3 key measures of manufacturing. The first county-level value of iron, steel, and sailing vessel production from the 1880 Economic Census. After 1880, data on this topic was no longer produced. 1880 is quite early for much Rust Belt development as it is pre-car. But it should at least give us a first pass of places that should definitely be included. Any county with ironworks gets 1 point.

Then we look at the manufacturing employment share of population in 1940. Any county with at least 1% higher employment in manufacturing that the national average gets a point. I then do the same for BEA’s 2016 county-level estimates.

So a county can get 3 points if it had ironworks in 1880, above-average manufacturing in 1940, and above-average manufacturing in 2016. I then give it another point if its manufacturing population share declined between 1940 and 2016 faster than the nation on the whole, and an additional point if it managed to complete a hat-trick of 1880, 1940, and 2016 manufacturing measures, basically as a way to single out places that meet all of my criteria.

Here’s the resulting map:

As you can see, there are at least 3 distinct manufacturing zones. In the south, we see the upper-south textile areas. In the northeast, we can see a zone around Massachusetts, which is also textile heavy, with a side of shipbuilding. Then we get a swathe from Pennsylvania, hrough Ohio, to Wisconsin, with a slash down the Ohio valley as well.

That is the Rust Belt. Remember my point about geographic continuity? I’m tossing out New England and the upper South. They may be Rusty, but they are not part of the belt. They are their own thing.

So next let’s look at another key question: coal mines! Heavy industry is key to the Rust Belt mythos, and heavy industry is heavily reliant on coal for energy. So anywhere with coal mines we should expect to be tied in to the Rust Belt Ecosystem.

This map includes some extra weighting for 1880 steelworks and for the overall manufacturing index, but is hugely driven by coal mines. You can see two major coal belts that tie into the Rust Belt: Appalachia, and the Illinois/Indiana/Western Kentucky cluster. The string through the Great Plains and the Mountain West mines are not of interest to me.

Finally, we can look at my indicator of cultural Rustyness: Lutheranism!

Here I dropped the binary to look at the actual data. Blue-green indicates more-than-national-average Lutheran share, brownish indicates less. As you can see, there are several distinct clusters of Lutherans. Down in Texas there is a cluster of Lutherans. There are a few smatterings in the Carolinas and the Great Valley. Then a very big group in Pennsylvania. Then not so many in western PA, but a very big group in northern Ohio, into northern Indiana. There’s another group in northeast Michigan. And then a vast clump of Scandinavians and Germans dominate the upper midwest.

The Carolina and Texas Lutherans don’t interest me. The others do!

So, when we combine all of our indexes together, we get:
['Lyman Stone']
['Economics', 'Politics', 'Midwest', 'Geography', 'Migration']