Objective: To investigate whether childhood exposure to local area New Deal emergency employment work relief activity was associated with lower depressive symptoms in late life. Methods: This study utilized individual-level data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) linked to the full count 1940 census. New Deal emergency employment programs were the largest non-wartime expansion in government led infrastructure, services, and employment policy in U.S. history. We used within county variation in WLS participants' exposure to emergency employment work relief activity during childhood (ages 0-3) to examine its association with depressive symptoms in late life. We examined depressive symptoms at three ages, 53-55, 65-67, and 72-74 but with a focus on depressive symptoms at ages 72-74 as a marker for late-life depression. Results: Children who lived in neighborhoods with moderate or high levels of emergency employment work relief activity exhibited 14-18% lower depressive symptom scores at ages 72-74 compared to those from neighborhoods with low activity. These findings were consistent across various measures of late-life depressive symptoms, different model specifications, and after accounting for prior depressive symptoms. Discussion: The study highlights the long-term mental health benefits of economic policies aimed at mitigating concentrated economic downturns among the most impacted individuals. Childhood exposure to New Deal work relief reduced depressive symptoms in older age, particularly new onsets of depressive symptoms at ages 72-74. These results suggest social policies aimed at maintaining economic activity in downturns can have long-term positive impacts on population mental health.

Urbanization has long fueled a dual narrative: cities are heralded as sources of economic dynamism and wealth creation yet criticized for fostering inequality and a range of social challenges. This paper addresses this tension using a multidisciplinary approach, combining social sciences methods with satellite imagery-based spatial pattern analysis to study the US urban expansion over the past century. We examine the impact of physical urban spatial characteristics (size, population density, and connectedness) on equality of opportunity, measured through intergenerational mobility, as well as its association with levels of income, wealth, and social capital. Our findings confirm that contemporary cities, particularly population-dense and expansive ones, are indeed divisive forces—acting as centers for income and wealth generation but failing to deliver equal opportunities for economic mobility. Perhaps surprisingly, this polarizing dynamic is a recent phenomenon. In the past, the most urbanized regions performed well in terms of income creation and equality of opportunity. Our analysis supports the hypothesis that the mid-20th century marked a pivotal shift toward more unequal and less inclusive patterns of urban growth.

Basic facts of infant mortality in the 19th-century United States are largely unknown due to a lack of data on births and infant deaths. Contradictory views have emerged from previous research. Estimates from life table exercises with US census data, published in the most recent (2006) Historical Statistics of the United States, suggest that infant mortality among US whites circa 1850–1880 was substantially worse than in much of contemporary Europe. However, a broader range of historical evidence indicates that US whites were among the healthiest 19th-century populations. We offer a new basis for estimating infant mortality: childhood sex ratios. Because of the female survival advantage in infancy, high rates of infant death tend to be reflected in female-skewed childhood sex ratios. We verify the empirical relationship between infant mortality and childhood sex ratios in historical populations with credible data on both and demonstrate that sex ratios can reveal broad patterns of infant mortality

Recent work has shown that children of immigrants were more economically mobile than those of natives in the early twentieth century United States and that this trend continues for more recent cohorts (Abramitzky et al. 2021). However, immigrant children are more likely to grow up in low-income households and often remain economically disadvantaged compared to native-born adults. We evaluate the impact of the introduction of kindergartens in the early twentieth century United States on the intergenerational mobility of children from both immigrant and native families. Friedrich Froebel operated the first kindergarten in Germany in 1837. The first kindergartens in the United States emerged during the late 1850s and the 1860s, but the widespread adoption of kindergartens in public school systems only occurred toward the end of the nineteenth century. The first public kindergarten opened in St. Louis in 1873. Between 1892 and 1912, the number of cities increased from 137 in 1892 to 867 in 1912. By 1912, the number increased to 6,563 public kindergartens with about 300,000 children enrolled. Kindergartens were largely an urban phenomenon, with 60 percent of five-to-six-year-old children enrolled in cities, and they were largely free. They sought to prepare children for primary school and aimed to assimilate immigrant children (Ager and Cinnirella 2020; US Bureau of Education 1914).

This article analyzes Black residents in the 1864 manuscript census from Windsor, Ontario. Conducted during the U.S. Civil War. this census provides unique insights into migration patterns, demographics in this Black North American border community at a crucial moment. Key findings from the census indicate that the majority of Black residents were born in the U.S., particularly in Kentucky and Virginia. Many families had crossed into Canada after 1850, to escape the Fugitive Slave Act. While statistical analysis of this census and our ability to match it to records from the 1860, 1861, 1870, and 1871 censuses is limited, the qualitative research, including oral histories and archival records, offers a richer understanding of Black migration and community formation. The article discusses several biographical vignettes, including Allen Sidney’s family, who successfully established themselves in Windsor while maintaining economic connections across the border; other families, including the Barnetts and Harpers, used Canada as a temporary refuge before returning to the United States. The study highlights the fluidity of the Detroit-Windsor border, where Black individuals moved strategically to maximize their freedoms and opportunities. The article underscores the limitations of quantitative data alone in understanding Black North American movements and emphasizes the importance of qualitative research in reconstructing lived experiences and offering deeper insights into migration decisions, social structures, and economic advancements.

Large numbers of Canadians, of both English and French descent, migrated to the United States between 1850 and 1930. In Canada, French-Canadian fertility and child mortality rates were about 50% higher than English Canadian rates. Although the English-Canadian and U.S. white population of native-born parentage experienced rapid fertility declines beginning in the mid to late nineteenth century, there is no sign of significant fertility decline among French Canadians before the twentieth century. We use the number of women’s children ever born and the number of surviving children in the IPUMS 1910 full-count census dataset to examine whether migration to the United States altered the timing of the demographic transition for French Canadians. We conduct multivariate analyses to examine correlates of child mortality and fertility (including separate analyses of birth spacing and stopping behaviors), focusing on variables related to the migratory experience. The results indicate that while large differentials in child mortality and fertility persisted between the French- and English-Canadian populations living in the United States, the mortality and fertility of second-generation French Canadians converged significantly toward English-Canadian levels. Other characteristics associated with greater integration into American society yield similar results, with women in exogamous unions, who could speak English, and who resided in enumeration districts with lower proportions of French Canadians experiencing significantly lower fertility and child mortality rates. As expected, the demographic regime of English-Canadian women was similar to US-born women of USborn parentage.

The authors study the responses to the withdrawal of two generous unemployment benefit (UB) schemes introduced in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploiting variations across states in the timing of the policy change. Using data from the Current Population Survey, they find that the expiration of UBs increased unemployment-to-employment transitions. However, approximately half of this effect was driven by job recalls. Evidence also shows that unemployed individuals transitioned into lower quality jobs, compared to their previous occupations, and that young job seekers not eligible for UBs were displaced by increased job-search competition. Using both survey and transaction data, the authors also provide complementary evidence on the consumption effects of the policy change. They document a small reduction in consumption after the withdrawal of pandemic UBs for some non-necessary spending categories.

From 1930 to 1939, a devastating drought affected the USA. To study environmentally induced migration, I develop datasets of environmental conditions (drought, heat, and precipitation) and census data between 1930 and 1940. My analysis shows that people moved from drought during the early and late 1930s. County-level environmental-related depopulation resulted from increased out-migration and decreased in-migration. At the individual level, all occupational categories (farm labor, farmers, general labor, skilled labor, and white collar) moved from severe environmental conditions, though the response varied depending on rural status. Individuals near cities, but not in the cities themselves, were typically the most mobile in response to shocks. While severe conditions impacted migration across much of the Western USA, the Great Plains states witnessed the most dramatic population declines. My findings provide a detailed view of the environmental forces driving 1930s migration, demonstrate responsiveness across labor sectors, and highlight where people left due to environmental conditions.

The IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel (MLP) is a longitudinal population panel that links American censuses, surveys, administrative sources, and vital records spanning the period from 1850 to the present. This article explains the rationale for IPUMS MLP, outlines the design of the infrastructure, and describes the linking methods used to construct the panel. We then detail our plans for expansion and improvement of MLP over the next five years, including the incorporation of additional data sources, the development of a "linkage hub" to connect MLP with other major record linkage efforts, and the refinement of our technology and dissemination efforts. We conclude by describing a few early examples of MLP-based research.

The educational achievements of Asian American children, especially those from lower backgrounds, are substantially higher than other ethnoracial groups. Hyper-selectivity theory finds the origin of such an advantage in the double selectivity of Asian immigrants after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act and the formation of cross-class community resources. Utilizing the 1940 linked full-count Census, 1940–2000 decennial censuses, and the 2008–2012 and 2015–2019 American Community Survey, this study tracks changes in the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children. Our results show that in contrast to the anticipated dependence of the educational achievements of Asian immigrants’ children on structural conditions, the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children have remained remarkably persistent over time and across geographical locations. The influx of highly educated Asian immigrants is not associated with an increase in the educational advantages of lower-background Asian Americans. The implications of these findings are discussed.

We propose a new measure of cultural distance based on differences in the composition of first names and church denominations between locations. We use a gravity equation to estimate the elasticity of migration flows with respect to the two components of cultural distance as well as a standard measure of travel costs via the transportation network in the United States between 1850 and 1870. Our findings indicate a modest role for cultural distance relative to travel costs in explaining migration flows. We construct migration costs that reflect the distinct contributions of cultural distance and travel costs, and use an economic geography model of migration to quantify their effects. Travel costs are substantially more important than cultural distance for aggregate welfare. Nevertheless, we provide evidence that the components of cultural distance play a role in shaping of how many people move and their final destinations.

Economic adjustments through trade and migration can mitigate environmental shocks but may also propagate them to other parts of the economy. Using a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model, I quantify the transmission of environmental shocks by capitalizing on the 1930s American Dust Bowl. The counterfactual analysis shows that the Dust Bowl decreased aggregate U.S. welfare by 3.80% per capita by 1940. The local shock in agriculture more than proportionally transmitted to consumer services, while the tradable goods-producing sec- tor mitigated the shock. Such a disparity hindered structural change to services in the Dust Bowl region. Instead, economy-wide adjustments relied on the spatial reallocation of workers. Moreover, the Dust Bowl region exported price increases in agricultural goods, leading to a sizeable welfare loss in the non-Dust Bowl region despite the relative increases in real income.

How do majority groups respond to a narrowing of inequality in racially polarized environments? We study this question by examining the effects of the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency created after the U.S. Civil War to provide aid to former slaves and launch institutional reform in the South. We use new historical records and an event study approach to estimate impacts of the Bureau on political economy in the South. In the decade immediately after the war, counties with Bureau field offices had reduced vote shares for Democrats, the major political party that previously championed slavery and opposed Black civil rights during Reconstruction. In the longer-run, we find evidence of backlash in the form of higher Democratic vote shares and increases in several forms of racial violence, including lynchings and attacks against Black schools. This backlash extends through the twentieth century, when we find that counties that once had a Bureau field office have higher rates of second-wave and third-wave Ku Klux Klan activity and lower rates of intergenerational economic mobility. Overall, our results suggest that the initial impacts of the Freedmen's Bureau stimulated countervailing responses by White majorities who sought to offset social progress of Black Americans.

Lasting changes in women’s employment followed the 1918 influenza pandemic in the United States. In the decades before the pandemic, consistently fewer women reported an occupation in cities that would go on to have longer interventions targeted at curbing influenza. This gap narrowed after the pandemic, and by 1930 cities with longer interventions experienced a 3.9 percentage point improvement in women’s employment rates on average, relative to cities with shorter interventions. These gains were concentrated in cities in which women had the right to vote prior to 1920.

In this paper, I use the expansion of the US railroad network from 1900 to 1910 and the resulting spatial variation in increased market access to investigate whether economic shocks that occur during childhood have long-run ramifications on later-life outcomes, and the channels through which such effects manifest. I link individuals across the 1900, 1910, and 1940 full-count US Censuses and incorporate an instrumental variable strategy to help isolate the causal effect of market access. I find that, in the short run, sons are less likely to be literate and have more siblings. In the long-run, these sons then become less likely to be well-educated and earn lower incomes. The results of this paper shed light on the mechanisms through which railroad-induced market access and other economic shocks during childhood can impact individuals even in later life.

This paper analyzes the occupational status of adult White foreign-born men in the antebellum United States, compared to White native-born men, and among the foreign born by country of origin. Hypotheses are developed regarding the effects on occupational status of human capital, demographic, and immigrant-related variables. The hypotheses are tested using the PUMS data for the 100 percent sample (full count) from the 1850 Census of Population, the first census to ask for the male respondent’s occupation, as well as the linked 1850-1860 Census data. Two quantitative measures of occupational status serve as the dependent variables – the Occupational Income Score and the Ducan Socioeconomic Index. The hypotheses are found to be consistent with the data. Moreover, other variables the same, while there is a large gap in occupational status between the foreign and native born just after the former arrive, this gap narrows very quickly and, other variables the same, White male immigrants reached occupational-income parity with their native-born counterparts at about 8.4 years after immigration

The educational achievements of Asian American children, especially those from lower backgrounds, are substantially higher than other ethnoracial groups. Hyper-selectivity theory finds the origin of such an advantage in the double selectivity of Asian immigrants after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act and the formation of cross-class community resources. Utilizing the 1940 linked full-count Census, 1940–2000 decennial censuses, and the 2008–2012 and 2015–2019 American Community Survey, this study tracks changes in the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children. Our results show that in contrast to the anticipated dependence of the educational achievements of Asian immigrants’ children on structural conditions, the educational advantages of Asian immigrants’ children have remained remarkably persistent over time and across geographical locations. The influx of highly educated Asian immigrants is not associated with an increase in the educational advantages of lower-background Asian Americans. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence for the effect of inclusive pro- paganda on cultural assimilation. During World War I, the U.S. witnessed unprece- dented propaganda led by the government to garner public support for the war. Given that 15% of the American population was foreign-born in 1917, the govern- ment promoted national unity and the integration of immigrants into the country’s shared culture and values. I create a novel dataset of city-level wartime campaigns by the Committee of Public Information (CPI), the first federal bureau charged with large-scale propaganda in American history. Leveraging idiosyncratic cancellation in campaign events with a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that immigrants living in cities with higher exposure to the CPI’s inclusive propaganda were more likely to initiate naturalization, marry native-born spouses, and give their children American names. Moreover, these immigrants supported the country even more actively than natives during the war by purchasing more war bonds and saving more food. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that immigrants who were more culturally distant from natives—either due to war-induced distance like wartime allegiances or existing cultural gaps—exhibited greater assimilation efforts, cor- roborating existing theoretical models. My findings reveal that inclusive messages from governments have the power to unify their populations.

How can governments in racially divided societies protect vulnerable populations from violence after large-scale internal conflict? When the majority is bent on perpetuating its power and privileges in the prevailing racial hierarchy, benevolence by government interveners is unlikely to curb societal support for violence against the racial minority. There is thus no alternative to using military coercion to quell insurgent violence. However, failing to maintain a long-term coercive apparatus can exacerbate violence by triggering revenge dynamics among the dominant group, particularly in communities that were once occupied by troops of the subordinate minority. Our analysis of white supremacist violence in the postbellum U.S. South substantiates these claims. Importantly, we show that racial revenge dynamics produced differential spikes in post-occupation violence against Black citizens: counties that had previously been occupied by Black troops witnessed higher incidences of racial violence for many decades than comparable areas that had not seen such occupation.

Gold and silver rushes increased the level of mining activity and settlement in the American West during the nineteenth century. This paper aims to identify the short-and long-run impacts of this activity on population growth and density. We find that, in response to gold and silver site discoveries, areas nearby grew more in population than areas farther away. Many of these newly formed towns eventually died, however, as the mining industry declined. These ghost towns were initially smaller, more isolated from markets, and more dependent on mining than their surviving counterparts. We find that, even though the mining industry had declined considerably by the early twentieth century, today's western population is still more populous and dense around historical mining sites compared to other areas. Early mining activity thus encouraged growth, decline, and path dependence in the urban system of the western US.