This paper introduces four new intergenerational and multigenerational datasets which follow both sons and daughters and which can be used to study the persistence of longevity, socioeconomic status, family structure, and geographic mobility across generations. The data follow the children of...

Debilitating events could leave either frailer or more robust survivors, depending on the extent of scarring and mortality selection. The majority of empirical analyses find frailer survivors. I find heterogeneous effects. Among severely stressed former Union Army POWs, which effect dominates 35...

We find that veterans of the Union Army who faced greater wartime stress (as measured by higher battlefield mortality rates) experienced higher mortality rates at older ages, but that men who were from more cohesive companies were statistically significantly less likely to be affected by wartime...

I use a sample of Union Army veterans to trace the impact of a high infant mortality rate in area of enlistment, such infectious disease as acute respiratory infections, measles, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, diarrhea, and malaria while in the army, occupation at enlistment, and...

Whether and how a paternal health shock cascades across multiple generations to affect descendant health is understudied even though a link between ancestral living conditions and descendant health may constitute an important source of differences in the stock of health capital across families...

We present evidence showing that the course of economic growth and of health, as measured by stature, Body Mass Index (BMI), mortality rates, or the prevalence of chronic conditions, diverged in the nineteenth century and converged in the twentieth. To analyze the change in welfare resulting...

I investigate how the relationship between health status and retirement among older men has changed since 1900 using weight adjusted for height or Body Mass Index (BMI) as a proxy for health. I find that both in 1900 and in 1985-1991 the relative risk of labor force non-participation increases...

I investigate the factors that fostered rising retirement rates prior to social security and private-sector pensions by estimating the income effect of a large government transfer, the first major pension program in the United States, covering Union Army veterans of the American Civil War. The...

This paper uses the records of the Union Army to compare the older age mortality experience of the first black and white cohorts who reached middle and late ages in the twentieth century. Blacks faced a greater risk of death from all causes, especially in large cities, from infectious and...