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Title: The Individual, the Family and the Community in the Rise of American School Attendance, 1850-1950
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 1995
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Abstract: This dissertation is an analysis of determinants of school attendance in the United States from 1850 to 1950. This study considers the effect on school attendance of three interrelated sets of characteristics: the individual, their family and the community. The types of students and the duration of their school attendance changed considerably over this 100-year period. In the middle and late nineteenth century, variations in individual, family and community characteristics had a tremendous impact on who went to school. By 1950, however, these variations made little difference; by then virtually all American children of school age attended school. This dissertation relies primarily on Federal Census data from the Integrated Public Microdata Series (IPUMS), constructed in conjunction with the Social History Research Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. This rich body of information, combining individual-level data from eleven Public Use Microdata Samples spanning 140 years from 1850 to 1990, provide the first ever analysis of school attendance at a national level for such an extended period of time. The study contains an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction outlines the topic, and discusses the historiography of school attendance. The first chapter is a broad overview of factors affecting school attendance in the United States. In this chapter I introduce the framework for this study, namely, that characteristics affecting school attendance existed on three levels, the individual, the family and the community. The second chapter is an analysis of the effects of race and region on the prospects for attending school. Chapter Three examines the effects of household economic and family structure and provides a brief discussion of the effects of child labor and mandatory school attendance laws. An analysis of the effects of immigration and ethnicity on school attendance is detailed in the fourth chapter, while Chapter five analyzes the effect evangelical religious groups had in promoting school attendance. The conclusion highlights the main points of the analysis, and connects the rise in school attendance to a broader theme of the homogenization of life in the United States in the twentieth century.
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Authors: Kallgren, Daniel
Institution: University of Minnesota
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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Publisher Location: Minneapolis, MN
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Race and Ethnicity
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