Significant social and economic changes have affected Bosra since the end of the French Mandate in 1946. While up until the 1950s the shopkeepers of Bosra were from Damascus, since then most shop owners are residents of the town. In the late Ottoman era and the French Mandate period, the agricultural relationship was between the small landowner and the sharecroppers, since agrarian reforms in the late 1950s and 1960s, the relevant relationship has been between the landowners and the wage laborers. Many of its residents have found work in the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, sending proceeds to their relatives in Bosra. Social changes together with increased access to education have largely diminished the traditional clan life according to historian Hanna Batatu.