The 1830s were a decade of enormous importance in American economic history. A disproportionate amount of attention has been paid to the Panic of 1837. The Crisis of 1839, however, led to four years of deflation and depression. This paper shows that events in 1839 followed a different path than...

This paper highlights the distinctive features of the theoretical approach taken by scholars" who analyzed the impacts of the mass migration into the United States in the two decades" preceding World War I. Broadly speaking, this literature was couched in terms of the "aggregate" production...

We model the relationship between local agricultural surpluses, nutritional status, and height, and we test the hypothesis that adult height is positively correlated with the local production of nutrition in infancy. We test the hypothesis on two samples of Union Army recruits - one consisting...

Immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before the Civil War were less likely to reside in locations with high immigrant concentrations as their time in the U.S. increased. This is contrary to the experience of recent immigrants who show no decrease in concentration after arrival. The reduced...

This study examines the occupational mobility of antebellum immigrants as they entered the U.S. White collar, skilled, and semi-skilled immigrants left unskilled jobs more rapidly after arrival than farmers and unskilled workers. British and German immigrants fared better than the Irish;...

Improvements in transportation and communication combined with technological changes in key manufacturing industries substantially increased competitive pressures in American labor markets during the last half of the nineteenth century. One manifestation of these changes was the widespread use...

This paper estimates child mortality by race and nativity for the U.S. as a whole and the Death Registration Area based on the public use micro- samples of the 1900 and 1910 censuses. We compare indirect estimates to mortality rates and parameters based on published census and vital statistics...

Marriage in colonial North America was notable for being early (for women) and marked by low percentages never marrying. This was different from the distinctive northwest European pattern of late marriage and high proportions never married late in life. But the underlying neolocal family...

Between the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of World War I improvements in transportation and communication encouraged increasing interregional and international economic integration. This paper traces and analyzes the progress of increasing labor market integration in the...

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...