Students of federalism in the United States and elsewhere have long been fascinated by the relationships between lower and higher levels of government. State municipal leagues are one important, yet understudied, means by which cities interact with states in the United States. I examine the history of these municipal leagues, arguing that the timing of their formation in U.S. states was in part dependent on state restrictions on special legislation and in part due to the efforts of nationwide networks of policy entrepreneurs. Drawing on scholarly literatures on collective action and associational networks, I develop and test an account of how state municipal leagues formed and how they spread.

Sex differences in mortality among historical populations are an intriguing yet neglected issue. In mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales, although women and girls enjoyed an overall longevity advantage, they tended to die at higher rates than males at ages when modern life tables show female advantage. We use multilevel modeling to analyze these sex differences in mortality. We identify significant regional variation, related to local demographic conditions, economic structure, and the nature of female employment. But some regional variation remains unexplained, suggesting the need for further investigation.

This study analyzes noncredit, rural property transfers from colonial South Carolina. These records are used to measure the frequency, annual timing, geographic spread, and turnover rate of land sales. These data also are used to derive a hedonic land-price index. We argue that these estimates reflect variations in the local expectations of future economic growth and conclude that the rapid increase in land prices reflected the fact that the Low country economy was indeed fueled by plantation agriculture.

In the wake of Hawaii's annexation by the United States, congressmen engaged in a series of intense debates about the suffrage laws that would govern the new territory. This article documents how these 1900 congressional debates contributed to a growing schism between the territorial definition of the state and the sociopolitical definition of the nation. The state officially expanded beyond the North American continent while the definition of the nation remained racially restrictive. A simultaneous espousal of inclusive, universalistic principles and exclusive, racist preferences characterized efforts among European American policy makers and political observers to exercise political domination over indigenous Hawaiians while, at the same time, maintaining white control of political power.

Employing the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series of the University of Minnesota, we chronicle the changing timing and duration of transitions to adulthood in the twentieth century. Successive generations of young Americans reinvented the transition to adulthood to accommodate shifts in the economy and the American state. The patterned choices of young people delineate three eras of social history in the twentieth century: the era of reciprocity (1900–1950), the era of dependence (1950–70s), and the era of autonomy (1970s-2000). We also explain why African Americans differed from the general trend; they developed distinctive transitions to adulthood in response to persistent inequality.

Between 1910 and 1970, millions of southern-born Americans migrated to the northern and western regions of the country in search of better opportunities. Some traveled only short distances, leaving Appalachia for nearby destinations in the southern Midwest. Others made the much longer trek to the West Coast. In this article, we use data from the 1920, 1940, and 1970 Public Use Microdata Samples to investigate the distances traveled by male participants in the Great Migration, with a special focus on differences by race, as well as on changes over time. We find that the average distance traveled increased substantially during the Great Migration for blacks and whites alike. However, throughout this time period, white migrants moved significantly farther than black migrants. The greater propensity for white migrants to move west, rather than north, accounts for a good deal of this overall racial variation. Although the difference in distance traveled between blacks and whites narrowed significantly over time, it remained substantial as the Great Migration came to a close. We conclude by highlighting the impact of these differential migration patterns on the composition and social conditions in northern cities.