We study differences in economic outcomes by perceived skin tone among African Americans using full-count U.S. decennial census data from the late-19 th and early-20 th centuries. Comparing children coded as "Black" or "Mulatto" by census enumerators and linking these children across population censuses, we first document large gaps in educational attainment and income among African Americans with darker and lighter perceived skin tones. To disentangle the drivers of these gaps, we identify all 36, 329 families in which enumerators assigned same-gender siblings different Black/Mulatto classifications. Relative to sisters coded as Mulatto, sisters coded as Black had lower educational attainment, were less likely to marry, and had lower-earning, less-educated husbands. These patterns are consistent with more severe contemporaneous discrimination against African-American women with darker perceived skin tones. In contrast, we find similar educational attainment, marital outcomes, and incomes among differently-classified brothers. Men perceived as African Americans of any skin tone faced similar contem-poraneous discrimination, consistent with the "one-drop" racial classification rule that grouped together individuals with any known Black ancestry. Lower incomes for African-American men perceived as having darker skin tone in the general population were driven by differences in opportunities and resources that varied across families, likely reflecting the impacts of historical or family-level discrimination.

Previous research suggests the relevance of in-utero insults and early-life circumstances for a wide array of life cycle outcomes. This research note joins this strand of studies by exploring the long-run mortality effects of inutero and early-life exposure to alcohol accessibility. In so doing, we take advantage of the prohibition movement during the early part of the twentieth century that generated quasi-natural reductions in alcohol consumption. We use Social Security Administration Death Master Files linked to the full-count 1940 census and compare the longevity of male individuals exposed to the prohibition during in-utero and early childhood (1900–1930) as a result of statewide and federal alcohol ban to those wet counties after the law change to before. The results suggest an intent-to-treat effect of 0.17 years higher longevity as a result of prohibition. A back-of-anenvelope calculation suggests a minimum treatment-on-treated effect of 1.7 years impact. Furthermore, we show that these effects are not driven by other county-level demographic and socioeconomic changes, endogenous selection of births, and preexisting trends in the outcome. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research that explores the in-utero and childhood circumstances on long-term health outcomes.

How do societies respond to adversity? After a negative shock, separate strands of research document either an increase in religiosity or a boost in innovation efforts. In this paper, we show that both reactions can occur at the same time, driven by different individuals within society. The setting of our study is the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. To measure religiosity, we construct a novel indicator based on naming patterns of newborns. We measure innovation through the universe of granted patents. Exploiting plausibly exogenous county-level variation in exposure to the pandemic, we provide evidence that more-affected counties become both more religious and more innovative. Looking within counties, we uncover heterogeneous responses: individuals from more religious backgrounds further embrace religion, while those from less religious backgrounds become more likely to choose a scientific occupation. Facing adversity widens the distance in religiosity between science-oriented individuals and the rest of the population, and it increases the polarization of religious beliefs.

We link census records for millions of farm children to identify owner-operators of the family farm in adulthood, providing the first population-level evidence on intergenerational farm transfers. Using our panel of U.S. census data from 1900 to 1940, our analysis supports the primogeniture hypothesis that oldest sons are more likely to inherit the family farm. Daughters are rarely observed as successors. We find that the birth order relationship among sons is relatively small and is only present for the subset of families with parents who are working age when they first have a successor, indicating that they had a succession plan. In families without an early successor, adult children who are tenant farmers or are not in an urban area are more likely to later inherit their family's farm. Tenancy and rural residence are much more predictive of succession than is birth order. Thus, unplanned succession may primarily benefit underresourced farmers. With fewer than one-fifth of farm families having a child successor, the slow growth in succession as parents reach retirement age and life expectancy suggests the importance of identifying a successor early.

This paper uses census data to examine the impact of child labor restrictions imposed by compulsory schooling laws and child labor regulation on fertility. By exploiting variation induced by changes in legislation across time and between US states during the early twentieth century, I show that parents chose to have fewer children in response to the constraints imposed on the labor supply of their potential children and the increase in their expected quality. My findings suggest that compulsory schooling laws and child labor regulation contributed to the demographic transition in the US and provide additional empirical support for the notion that financial incentives play a role in determining household fertility decisions.

In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas due to variation in the national-origin mix of their immigrant population. US-born workers in areas losing immigrants did not benefit relative to workers in less exposed areas. Instead, in urban areas, European immigrants were replaced with internal migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Canada. By contrast, farmers shifted toward capital-intensive agriculture, and the immigrant-intensive mining industry contracted. These differences highlight the uneven effects of the quota system at the local level.

We estimate the urban wage premium in the United States from 1940 to 2010. Drawing on recent advances in the literature on selection on unobservables, we show how to control for heterogeneity in the characteristics of individuals that choose to live in cities to address endogenous sorting. Estimates from naive comparisons of individuals living in urban versus non-urban areas substantially overstate the urban wage premium. We find that the premium is highest in the middle of the twentieth century (about 12 percent in 1940 and 1950) relative to the early in twenty-first century (declining to a few percent by 2010). Overall, the urban wage premium is decreasing and sorting explains a larger fraction of the difference in urban versus non-urban earnings across our sample period.

This study explores the long-term health effects of prenatal exposure to racialized violence by analyzing Social Security Administration death records linked with the 1940 census. We exploit variations in lynching incidences to understand their impact on old-age longevity. The results reveal a 3.7 month decrease in longevity for Black males who were exposed to a lynching of a Black victim during gestation. This exposure accounts for approximately 10% of the life expectancy gap between Black and White men in 1980, without negative effects observed among White individuals. Further analysis suggests reductions in socioeconomic measures are likely explanatory factors.

In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas due to variation in the national-origin mix of their immigrant population. US-born workers in areas losing immigrants did not benefit relative to workers in less exposed areas. Instead, in urban areas, European immigrants were replaced with internal migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Canada. By contrast, farmers shifted toward capital-intensive agriculture and the immigrant-intensive mining industry contracted. These differences highlight the uneven effects of the quota system at the local level.

Large and persistent racial disparities in land-based wealth were an important legacy of slavery and Reconstruction. We combine records from the censuses of agriculture and population to observe farmers’ landholdings (acreage and value) in 1880, revealing large racial disparities. To assess how these disparities were transmitted intergenerationally, we link sons from both farmer-headed and other households to the 1900 census records. We find that Black landowners transmitted substantial advantages to their sons, particularly in literacy and homeownership, even in estimates based on within-locality variation. But overall, such advantages were small relative to the racial gaps in economic status.

In my dissertation, I explore the connection between economic history and political economy in three ways. Chapter 1, studies the effects of a postal program in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century and its role in increasing access to higher education. Chapter 2, co-authored with Alexey Makaring and Ricardo Pique, focuses on a historical episode of foreign annexation and its political ´ consequences. Chapter 3, co-authored with Matteo Magnaricotte, studies the effect of U.S. movies on electoral choices in Italy during the Cold War period. All chapters of my dissertation were written before I joined the Bank of Italy and, as such, views and opinions expressed in this paper do not represent in any way those of the Bank of Italy.

We conduct the first quantitative assessment of federal college subsidies during the 1930s. Overlapping generation households invest in children’s education to maximize multigenerational utility, and the government subsidizes college to maximize enrollment subject to a budget constraint and recipients satisfying ability and income qualifications. A modelling innovation assigns children educational ability through a random regression to the population mean correlated with father’s presumed ability ranking via his percentile in fathers’ earnings distribution. Simulating the theoretical model, the equilibrium that replicates actual education distributions estimates federal college subsidies increased graduation rates of the cohort of White Americans reaching college age during the 1930s by 22.12% for men and 19.16% for women; the mean ability of subsidy recipients exceeded non-subsidized students’ mean .4 s.d. The program favored middle income groups. Most benefits accrued to high ability students with fathers in the 4th through 6th deciles of fathers’ earnings distribution. The subsidies had no effect on the graduation rates of high ability students in the bottom two deciles of fathers’ earnings. A more universal government policy that maximized stipends subject only to the budget and income criteria would have increased annual stipends by about 50 thousand while only decreasing college students’ mean ability .13 s.d. Gender biases favoring higher male graduation rates remain a puzzle.

The 1870 election in Maine resulted in a Re- publican sweep of statewide offices, of the five seats in the US House of Representatives that Maine then enjoyed, and of control of both houses of the Legislature.The issues in the elec- tion were similar to what the Republicans and Democrats had contested before, during and af- ter the Civil War: race, citizenship, and the reg- ulation of alcohol. What makes the 1870 elec- tion worthy of closer study is the availability of the 1870 Census in machine-readable format. The census that year asked respondents a pair of questions about their eligibility to vote and their being denied the right to vote. Cross-tab- ulating the answers from the census with town- level voting returns results in new views on the state of democracy in Maine. This article pres-ents information about the size of the Voting Eligible Population (VEP), variable turnout of voters, and the partisan orientation of Maine’s counties and towns.

OUTLINE: •Introduction to IPUMS •Data Availability •Complete Count Data 1790-1950 •Linked census data 1850-1940 •Questions [a full guide and introduction to IPUMS and effective utilization]

During the late nineteenth century, half of all municipalities installed lead water pipes, exposing millions of people to harmful levels of lead consumption. This paper explores the long-term, and intergenerational, effects of waterborne lead exposure on men's labor market outcomes using linked samples drawn from the full count censuses. For identification, we leverage variation in lead pipe adoption across cities and differences in the chemical properties of a town's water supply, which interact to influence the extent of lead leaching. Results show adult men with higher levels of waterborne lead exposure as children have lower incomes , worse occupations, and lower levels of completed education compared to adult men who had lower levels of waterborne lead exposure as children. Men who are exposed to higher levels of waterborne lead have a significantly decreased probability of improving their income rank relative to their fathers, which is consistent with lead exposure behaving like a negative place-based shock that constrains upward mobility.

How can racial discrimination harm innovation? We study this question using data on US inventors linked to population censuses in 1895-1925. Our novel identification strategy leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of lynchings and the name of the victims. We find an immediate and persistent decrease in patents granted to inventors who share their names with the victims of lynchings, but only when victims are Black. We hypothesize that lynchings accentuate the racial content of the victim's name to patent examiners, who do not observe inventor race from patent applications. We interpret these findings as evidence of discrimination by patent examiners and provide evidence against alternative mechanisms. for in-sightful comments and discussions, as well as seminar audiences at Bocconi University, CERGE-EI, LSE, Northwestern University , RWI Essen, and the UNCE Workshop for helpful suggestions. We are grateful to Enrico Berkes for sharing data with us. Michael Giordano provided outstanding research assistance by verifying the content of newspaper articles. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Center for Economic History at Northwestern University, Fondazione Romeo and Enrica Invernizzi, the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the UNCE project (UNCE/HUM/035). All errors are our own.

Redlining refers to discriminatory lending practices based on the demographic composition of neighborhoods. The term is often attributed to boundaries drawn on maps by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the 1930s to represent the perceived credit risk of neighborhoods. Combined with other discriminatory actions, redlining restricted access to mortgage financing for racial minorities, and areas subject to historic redlining practices still exhibit worse outcomes on various socio-economic dimensions. This study examines contemporary differences in residential housing values along historic redlined boundaries. Boundary fixed effects models are constructed using contemporary property sale data for Seattle, WA and Richmond, VA from 2000 to 2018. Results indicate that properties inside a redlined boundary continue to sell at significantly discounted prices compared to houses across the redlined border. Further investigation, using historic data from the 1930s and 1940s, finds that there was also a large and significant historic difference in housing values across the redlined boundaries at that time, including before the advent of HOLC maps. This suggests that contemporary differences in housing values are likely not a direct effect of HOLC maps but rather depict the lingering effect of broader redlining and discriminatory practices that existed before the advent of these maps.

This paper uses new data on copyright registration title pages from the Library of Congress (LOC) to analyze the intellectual and cultural development of the United States over 1790-1870. I construct national time series of book production over this period which show an uptake in per-capita terms in 1830, well before the start of the Second Industrial Revolution and the era of "knowledge based progress" (Abramovitz & David, 1996). Matching authors to locations (at the county level) using declassified census data reveals that the spatial distribution of intellectual production in the early 19th century is strongly correlated with inventive activity over 1860-1940 and the evolution of the manufacturing sector. Identification is based on a shift-share type instrument exploiting the large internal migration patterns occurring in this time period. I then use topic modeling to classify books according to subject matter. Contrary to commonly held beliefs, scientific works are not the strongest predictors of the economic trajectories of US counties. Their correlation with manufacturing activity is relatively large in the short-run but disappears over a few decades whereas non-scientific works show an enduring relationship with economic development well into the 20th century. A theoretical model is briefly sketched which rationalizes these results.

Black families moved into Westside San Bernardino in small numbers in 1910s and 20s, settling near the Santa Fe Railyard between 6th and 9th east of Mount Vernon. They built churches, businesses and masonic orders and the NAACP that became the foundation of early civil rights movement from the 1920s through the 1940s. This StoryMap traces the long the civil rights movement in San Bernardino, highlighting the roots of the movement in the 40s, the challenges to housing segregation in the 50s, and the activism for equal education in the 1960s and 70s. Drawing on oral histories and photos from the Bridges That Carried Us Over Project, this StoryMap brings to life the rich history of activism on San Bernardino's Westside including the stories of W.S. Johnson who was president of the NAACP founded in 1919, Art Townsend who started the Precinct Reporter and mentored a generation of activists, and Frances Grice who worked alongside Bonnie Johnson and Valerie Pope to launch the Community League of Mothers to fight for school desegregation and equal schools.

This paper assesses the causal impact of greater market access on demographic transition during the latter half of the 19th century in the United States. We construct new measures of fertility changes and measures of railroad access at the county level from 1850 – 1890. We are able to document market-access-induced changes in fertility due to both extensive margins (shifts in occupations with different average fertility rates) and intensive margins (changes in fertility within each occupation class). Both our theoretical model and empirical results suggest that declining fertility in counties mainly occurred through extensive margins. We further discover that fertility changes occurred mainly through strengthening patterns of specialization, rather than through greater industrialization or urbanization, suggesting that demographics diverged within the United States during this period.