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Migration within the U.S., 1800–1960: Some New Estimates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Stanley Lebergott
Stanley Lebergott
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University
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Extract

The pioneers' trek across the land has long been taken as a central element in American social history. But that redistribution of resources has been no less vital in fueling the advance of productivity, in supporting the varying pattern of final outputs. Because migration both caused, and was a consequence of, these massive changes there has long been an interest in measuring the scope and detail of population redistribution.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1970 , pp. 839 - 847
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1970

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References

The National Science Foundation has provided funds for a larger project on 19th century growth, of which this work is part. Steven Kuney was responsible for astute and assiduous data collection and computer programming.

1 Kuznets, Simon and Thomas, Dorothy, Population Redistribution and Economic Growth, United States, 1870–1950, I (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1957–1964)Google Scholar. These migration rates—for persons aged 10 and over—were used in our regressions. However, data shown in our Tables are for all persons and are revised somewhat. For their source see footnote 4.

2 The inadequacy of the Census of 1870, which did differentially underenumerate by state, is notorious. The Wharton School project did not correct for that bias in making its 1870–80 estimates, and we do not in making our 1860–70 estimates. Tacitly such an omission presumes that the bias in data for each age-color migrant group was proportionate to that for the corresponding population group, leaving the migrant rates unaffected.

3 Thomas, Dorothy, “Age and Economic Differentials in Interstate Migration,” Population Index (October 1958), p. 313Google Scholar as well as her Research Memorandum there cited. Kuznets and Thomas, Population Redistribution, I, pp. 58–64.

4 Kuznets and Thomas, Population Redistribution, III.

5 U.S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), p. xxxviGoogle Scholar; U.S. Census Office, The Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1864), pp. 616–619Google Scholar.

6 The state rates are in Kuznets and Thomas, Population Redistribution, I, pp. 74–75, 91.

7 Rates for native whites, as estimated by the Census survival method appear on pages 78–79 of Ibid., while rates for the total population are given in Table P-1.

8 Cf. his analysis in the 1900 Census, Supplementary Analysis and Derived Tables, pp. 411, 415–16. He analyzed these results somewhat further in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, XII (March 1911), pp. 490–500Google Scholar. The next work, by Whelpton, (in Social Forces, VI, March 1928, pp. 458–473CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in Forecasts of the Population of the United States, 1945–1975, Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1947)Google Scholar relates only to the U.S. and regions, as do the standardized data presented in Grabill, W., Kiser, C. and Whelpton, P. K., The Fertility of American Women (New York: Wiley, 1958), p. 14Google Scholar.

9 The 1850–1900 data come from Wilcox, Supplementary Analysis. The 1910 data are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population, 1910, I (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1913), pp. 361–409Google Scholar.

For 1830–40 the Census data, which relate only to whites, are adjusted to the total by the individual state ratios in 1850 of (a) white children under 5 per 1,000 white women 15–49, to (b) all children under 5 per 1,000 women 15–49.

For 1800–1840 various adjustments of reported Census age intervals—e.g., from 16 to 44 to 15–49 were made on the basis of ratios prevailing at the first Census after the one in question that provided requisite data for computing adjustment proportions.

10 The population change data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1960, Vol. I, Characteristics of the Population, Part A, Number of Inhabitants (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1961)Google Scholar, Table 10. The derivation of the natural increase proxy has been described above.

11 It will be noted that a variety of figures in Tables 1 and 2 are asterisked despite the availability of population change and children/female data. For these states, population increases of over 100 percent were reported. Since our basic equations were fitted to observations whose range of values did not reach that high we do not estimate for periods in which so extreme an extrapolation would be required. Typically one would expect the true migration rates for these cells probably ran upwards of 50 percent. Regional data are similarly suppressed where a substantial proportion of population within the region was in states reporting 100 percent or greater population growth.

12 The migration counts, as well as rates based on beginning of decade total population figures, appear in Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P. 25, No. 247, Estimates of Components of Population Change (1962). Supplementary population data are from the 1960 Census, U.S. Summary, PC (1) 1A. The data for 1870–1940 are from Eldridge, and Thomas, , Demographic Analyses and Interrelations (1964), Volume III of the Wharton School study, pp. 243, 245, 247Google Scholar.