Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T20:46:28.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nativity and Wealth in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Timothy G. Conley  and
David W. Galenson
Timothy G. Conley
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
David W. Galenson
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article uses evidence from the manuscripts of the 1860 federal census to analyze the wealth of adult males in Boston, New York, Chicago, and Indianapolis. Previous multivariate analyses of wealth from the census have been flawed by reliance on ordinary least squares; we instead use quantile regression. Immigrants fared considerably better in the Midwest than the East: immigrants in the midwestern cities held more wealth than their eastern counterparts, both absolutely and relative to the native-born in their respective cities. We explore the causes of these differences and their consequences for nineteenth-century Americans and their communities.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 468 - 493
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, and Bateman, Fred. “Egalitarianism, Inequality, and Age: The Rural North in 1860.” this JOURNAL 41, no. 1 (1981): 85–93.Google Scholar
Bogue, Allen G.. From Prairie to Cornbelt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Coelho, Philip R. P., and Shepherd, James F.. “Differences in Regional Prices: The United States, 1851–1880.” this JOURNAL 34, no. 3 (1974): 551–91.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., and Galenson, David W.. “Economic Opportunity in Urban America: Region, Nativity, and Wealth in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Unpublished paper, University of Chicago, 1996.Google Scholar
Curti, Merle. The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Einhorn, Robin L.Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833–1872. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Faires, Nora. “Occupational Pattems of German-Americans in Nineteenth-Century Cities.” In German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850–1910: A Comparative Perspective, edited by Keil, Hartmut and Jentz, John B., 37–51. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Ferrie, Joseph P. “The Wealth Accumulation of Antebellum European Immigrants to the U.S., 1840–60.” this JOURNAL 54, no. 1 (1994): 1–33.Google 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. “Determinants of the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago.” History of Education Quarterly 35, no. 4 (1995): 377–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W. “Neighborhood Effects on the School Attendance of Irish Immigrants' Sons in Boston and Chicago in 1860.” American Journal of Education 105 no. 3 (1997): 261–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galenson, David W. “Ethnicity, Neighborhood, and the School Attendance of Boys in Antebellum Boston.” Journal of Urban History, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Galenson, David W., and Pope, Clayne L.. “Precedence and Wealth: Evidence from Nineteenth Century Utah.” In Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History, edited by Goldin, Claudia and Rockoff, Hugh, 225–41 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Gjerde, Jon. From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Hale, William Harlan. Horace Greeley, Voice of the People. New York: Harper, 1950.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar. Boston's Immigrants, 1790–1880. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941.Google 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
Hershberg, Theodore, Katz, Michael, Blumin, Stuart, Glasco, Lawrence, and Griffen, Clyde. “Occupation and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century Cities: A Collaborative Inquiry.” Historical Methods Newsletter 7, no. 3 (1974): 174–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kearl, J. R., and Pope, Clayne L.. “Choices, Rents, and Luck: Economic Mobility of Nineteenth-Century Utah Households.” In Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, edited by Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E., 215–60. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Kearl, J. R., Pope, Clayne L., and Wimmer, Larry J.. “Household Wealth in a Settlement Economy.” this JOURNAL 40, no. 3 (1980): 477–96.Google Scholar
Kirk, Gordon W., and Kirk, Carolyn Tyirin. “The Immigrant, Economic Opportunity and Type of Settlement in Nineteenth-Century America.” this Journal 38, no. 1 (1978): 226–34.Google Scholar
Koenker, R., and Bassett, G.. “Regression Quantiles.” Econometrica 46, no. 1 (1978): 33–50.CrossRefGoogle 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 of the Past, edited by Galenson, David W., 148–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Powell, J. L. “Censored Regression Quantiles.” Journal of Econometrics 32 no. 1 (1986): 143–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soltow, Lee. Patterns of Wealthholding in Wisconsin Since 1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Soltow, Lee. Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850–1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Stave, Bruce M. “A Conversation with Stephan Thernstrom.” Journal of Urban History 1, no. 2 (1975): 189–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stott, Richard B.Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thernstrom, Stephan. The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1947.Google Scholar
U. S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957. Washington, DC: GPO, 1960.Google Scholar
Ward, David. “Nineteenth Century Boston: A Study of the Role of Antecedent and Adjacent Conditions in the Spatial Aspects of Urban Growth.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1963.Google Scholar