Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T14:59:47.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migration and Economic Mobility: Wealth Accumulation and Occupational Change Among Antebellum Migrants and Persisters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Steven Herscovici
Steven Herscovici
Affiliation:
Analysis Group/Economics, One Brattle Square, Fifth Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138. Phone (617)349-2102; (617)864-3742.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Research on nineteenth-century economic and social mobility has concentrated on occupational change among men who remained in the same community for ten or more years, although fewer than half of any community's residents persist that long. This article uses a data set created specifically to compare the experiences of men who migrated from Newburyport, Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century with those of men who persisted. It finds that blue-collar migrants were more successful than were their counterparts who did not move. The results suggest that previous studies may have considerably underestimated the extent of economic opportunity in nineteenth-century America.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 927 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atack, Jeremy, Fred, Bateman, and Mary, Eschelbach Gregson. “‘Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match’: A General Personal Computer-Based Matching Program for Historical Research.” Historical Methods 25, no. 2 (1992): 53–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barron, Hal S.Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth Century New England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Barrows, Robert G. “Hunyin' Hoosiers and the American ‘Pattern’: Geographic Mobility in Indianapolis and Urban North America.” Social Science History 5, no. 2 (1981): 197–222.Google Scholar
Buchinsky, Moshe. “Recent Advances in Quantile Regression Models: A Practical Guideline for Empirical Research.” Journal of Human Resources 33, no. 1 (1998): 88–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coale, Ansley J., and Paul, Demeny. Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations. 2d ed.New York: Academic Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Coffey, Lorraine Mildred. “The Rise and Decline of the Port of Newburyport.” Ph.D. Diss., Boston University, 1975.Google Scholar
Conley, Timothy G., and Galenson, David W.. “Quantile Regression Analysis of Censored Wealth Data.” Historical Methods 27, no. 4 (1994): 149–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conley, Timothy G., Galenson, David W., and Steven, Herscovici. “Economic Opportunity in Urban America: Region, Nativity, and Wealth in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Unpublished paper, University of Chicago, 1995.Google Scholar
Conley, Timothy G., Galenson, David W., and Steven, Herscovici. “The Impact of Region and Nativity on Age-Wealth Profiles in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Unpublished paper, University of Chicago, 1996.Google Scholar
Creasey, George W.The City of Newburyport in the Civil War, from 1861–1865. Boston: Griffith Stillings Press, 1903.Google Scholar
Currier, John J.The History of Newburyport, 1764–1909. 2 Vols. Newburyport, MA: John J. Currier, 1906–1909.Google Scholar
Davenport, David Paul. “Migration to Albany, New York, 1850–1855.” Social Science History 13, no. 2 (1989): 159–85.Google Scholar
Davenport, David Paul. Population Persistence and Mi gration in Rural New York 1855–1860. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.Google Scholar
Dublin, Thomas. “Rural-Urban Migrants in Industrial New England: The Case of Lynn, Massachusetts in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Journal of American History 73, no.3 (1986): 623–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph P. “‘We are Yankeys Now‐: The Economic Mobility of Two Thousand Antebellum Immigrants, 1840–1860.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Chicago, 1992.Google Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph P. “Up and out or Down and Out? Immigrant Mobility in the Antebellum United States.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26, no. 1 (1995): 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph P. “A New Sample of Males Linked from the Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1850 U.S. Federal Census of Population to the 1860 U.S. Federal Census Manuscript Schedules.” Historical Methods 29, no. 4 (1996): 141–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisch, Michael. “Poverty and Progress: A Paradoxical Legacy.” Social Science History 10, no. 1(1986): 15–22.Google Scholar
Galenson, David W. “Economic Determinants of the Age at Leaving Home: Evidence from the Lives of Nineteenth-Century New England Manufacturers.” Social Science History 11, no.4 (1987): 355–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W. “Economic Opportunity on the Urban Frontier: Nativity, Work and Wealth in Early Chicago.“ this JOURNAL 51, no. 3 (1991) 581–603.Google Scholar
Galenson, David W., and Levy, Daniel S.. “A Note on the Biases in the Measurement of Geographic Persistence Rates.” Historical Methods 19, no. 4 (1986) 171–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W., and Pope, Clayne L.. “Economic and Geographic Mobility on the Farming Frontier: Evidence from Appanoose County, Iowa, 1850–1870.” this JOURNAL 49, no. 3 (1989), 635–55.Google Scholar
Gallman, Robert E., “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1909.” In Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States After 1800, edited by Brady, Dorothy S., pp. 3–76. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Griffen, Clyde and Sally, Griffen. Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth Centary Poughkeepsie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy, Melissa A. “Estimating Selection Effects in Occupational Mobility in a 19th-Century City.” American Sociological Review 54, no. 5 (1989): 834–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herscovici, Steven. “The Distribution of Wealth in Nineteenth Century Boston: Inequality Among Natives and Immigrants, 1860.” Explorations in Economic History 30, no. 3 (1993): 321–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herscovici, Steven. “Ethnic Differences in School Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newbutyport, 1850–1860.” Social Science History 18, no. 4 (1994): 471–96.Google Scholar
Herscovici, Steven. “Progress Amid Poverty: Economic Opportunity in Antebellum Newburyport.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Chicago, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Ronald Vern. Index to the Eighth Census of the United States. Salt Lake City: Accelerated Indexing Systems International, 1991-1994.Google Scholar
Katz, Michael B.The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth Century City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knights, Peter R.The Plain People of Boston: A Study in Growth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Knights, Peter R.Yankee Destinies: The Lives of Ordinary Nineteenth-Century Bostonians. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Koenker, Roger, and Gilbert, Bassett Jr. “Regression Quantiles.” Econometrica 46, no. 1 (1978): 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labaree, Benjamin W.Patriots and Partisans: The Merchants of Newburyport 1764–1815. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Lynch, B. T., and Arends, W. L.. “Selection of a Surname Coding Scheme for the SRS Record Linkage System.” Unpublished paper, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1977.Google Scholar
Parkerson, Donald H. “How Mobile were Nineteenth Century Americans?” Historical Methods 15, no. 3 (1982): 99–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pessen, Edward. “Poverty and Progress: A Critique.” Social Science History 10, no. 1 (1986): 5–13.Google Scholar
Pope, Clayne L. “Households on the American Frontier: The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Utah, 1850–1900.” In Markets in History: Economic Studies ofthe Past edited by Galenson, David W., pp. 148–89. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Powell, James L. “Censored Regression Quantiles.” Journal of Econometrics 32, no. 1(1986): 143–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reiss, Steven A. “The Impact of Poverty and Progress on the Generation of Historians Trained in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s.” Social Science History 10, no. 1 (1986): 23–32.Google Scholar
Sjaastad, Larry A. “The Costs and Returns of Human Migration.” Journal of Political Economy 70, no. 5, Pt. 2 (Supplement), (1962): 80–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokoloff, Kenneth L., and Villaflor, Georgia C.. “The Market for Manufacturing Workers During Early Industrialization: The American Northeast, 1820 to 1860.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History, edited by Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, pp. 29–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Soltow, Lee. Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850–1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H. “Census Matching and Migration: A Research Strategy.” Historical Methods 21, no. 2 (1988): 52–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steckel, Richard H. “The Age at Leaving Home in the United States, 1850–1860.” Social Science History 20, no. 4 (1996): 507–532.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan. Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan. The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis 1880–1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan. “Poverty and Progress Revisited: A Response to Reiss, Frisch, and Pessen.” Social Science History 10, no. 1 (1986): 33–44.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Seventh Census of The United States: 1850 (Vol. 1, Population). Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, Public Printer, 1853.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Population of the United States in 1860 (Vol. 1, Population). Washington, DC: GPO, 1864.Google Scholar
Vinovskis, Maris. Fertility in Massachusetts from the Revolution to the Civil War New York: Academic Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Winkle, Kenneth J.The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar