Changes in American and British Stature Since the Mid-Eighteenth Century: A Prelimanary Report on the Usefulness of Data on Height...

This paper is a progress report on the usefulness of data on physical height for the analysis of long-ten changes in the level of nutrition and health on economic, social, and demographic behavior. It is based on a set of samples covering the U.S. and several other nations over the years from 1750 to the present. The preliminary results indicate that native-born. American Revolution, but there were long periods of declining nutrition and height during the 19th century. Similar cycling has been established for England. A variety of factors, including crop mix, urbanization, occupation, intensity of labor, and immigration affected the level of height and nutrition, although the relative importance of these factors has changed over time. There is evidence that nutrition affected labor productivity. In one of the samples individuals who were one standard deviation above the mean height (holding weight per inch of height constant) were about 8% more productive than individuals one standard deviation below the mean height. Another finding is that death did not choose people at random. Analysis of data for Trinidad indicates that the annual death rate for the shortest quintile of males was more than twice as great as for the tallest quintile of males.

Iowa's Population Prospect, 1934

Iowa's Population Prospect by P.K. Whelpton. Published in the Research Bulletin No. 177, October, 1934. Agricultural Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts

Fertility in New York State in the Civil War Era

This paper analyzes a five percent systematic sample of households from the manuscripts of the New York State Census of 1865, the first in the United States to ask a question on children ever born. The sample of seven counties (Allegany, Dutchess, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Steuben, Tompkins, and Warren) was selected to provide a diversity of locations, settlement dates, and types of agricultural economy. The parity data indicate a strong decline in marital fertility during the first part of the 19th Century; little evidence of fertility control within marriage is found for the oldest women in the sample, but analysis of parity progression ratios indicates that control had emerged by the midpoint of the 19th Century. Fertility decline was initially most evident in the urban, more economically developed areas, but eventual levels were equal in the urban and rural parts of the sample. While a marital fertility transition occurred in 19th Century New York, many couples continued to have quite high levels of fertility, indicating the difficulty that many couples probably faced in controlling their reproduction.

Residential segregation and the fertility of immigrants and their descendants

Measures of community population composition, like residential segregation, are important theoretical mechanisms that have the potential to explain differences in fertility between immigrants, their descendants, and destination natives. However, only a handful of studies explore these mechanisms, and most are limited by the fact that they carry out cross-sectional analysis. This study proposes a new approach, which focuses on community composition in childhood. It uses longitudinal census data and registered births in England and Wales to investigate the relationship between completed fertility and multiple measures of community composition, including residential segregation. The results show that the fertility of immigrants is closer to native fertility if they grow up in less segregated areas. This provides evidence in support of the childhood socialisation hypothesis. Furthermore, residential segregation explains some of the variation in completed fertility for second generation women from Pakistan and Bangladesh, the only second generation group to have significantly higher completed fertility than natives. This suggests one reason why the fertility of some South Asians in England and Wales may remain ‘culturally entrenched’. All of these findings are consistent for different measures of community composition. They are also easier to interpret than the results of previous research because exposure is measured before childbearing has commenced, therefore avoiding many issues relating to selection, simultaneity and conditioning on the future

The Puzzle of the Antebellum Fertility Decline in the United States: New Evidence and Reconsideration

All nations that can be characterized as developed have undergone the demographic transition from high to low levels of fertility and mortality. Most presently developed nations began their fertility transitions in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. The United States was an exception. Evidence using census-based child-woman ratios suggests that the fertility of the white population of the United States was declining from at least the year 1800. By the end of the antebellum period in 1860, child-woman ratios had declined 33 percent. There is also indication that the free black population was experiencing a fertility transition. This transition was well in advance of significant urbanization, industrialization, and mortality decline and well in advance of every other presently developed nation with the exception of France. This paper uses census data on county-level child-woman ratios to test a variety of explanations on the antebellum American fertility transition. It also uses micro data from the IPUMS files for 1850 and 1860. A number of the explanations, including the land availability hypothesis, the local labor market-child default hypothesis, and the life cycle saving hypothesis, are consistent with the data, but nuptiality, not one of the usual explanations, emerges as likely very important.

Human resources of New England.

This item has been digitized by the Internet Archive. Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

When Bridget is Good She is So Very good ... When She is Bad, She is Horrid : Portrayals of Female Irish Immigrants in America during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Irish women accounted for more than half of all Irish emigrants to leave Ireland. A great portion of these women settled in urban centers on the East coast of the United States where a large percentage took jobs as domestic servants. The great number of Irish women involved in domestic service led to the emergence of the negative stereotype of the Irish maid Bridget, in popular entertainment and literature. Further research into the literature and data of the time shows positive contemporary descriptions of Irish women involved in American domestic service. These positive descriptions add an opposing view of Irish-American identity that stands in contrast to the common negative stereotypes. These positive descriptions, along with examples of hard data show how the reality of Irish women in America often stood in sharp contrast to the stereotype presented by way of the Irish maid Bridget. By looking at the involvement of Irish women in the American workforce one can trace the rather rapid move towards Americanization from the first generation into the second and third. Irish-American women quickly distanced themselves from the negative connotations present in domestic service and began to follow the employment patterns of native-born American women as well as adopting American values and culture. Through education, industriousness, and the willingness to adapt, Irish women helped bring a large portion of the Irish-American community into the American middle-class