Research
Working Papers
After the Burning: The Economic Effects of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
NBER working paper 28985
With Alex Albright, Jeremy A. Cook, James J. Feigenbaum, Laura-Thorne Kincaide, & Nathan Nunn
Updated: July 2021
Abstract: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the looting, burning, and leveling of 35 square blocks of a once-thriving Black neighborhood. Not only did this lead to severe economic loss, but the massacre also sent a warning to Black individuals across the country that similar events were possible in their communities. We examine the economic consequences of the massacre for Black populations in Tulsa and across the United States. We find that for the Black population of Tulsa, in the two decades that followed, the massacre led to declines in home ownership and occupational status. Outside of Tulsa, we find that the massacre also reduced home ownership. These effects were strongest in communities that were more exposed to newspaper coverage of the massacre or communities that, like Tulsa, had high levels of racial segregation. Examining effects after 1940, we find that the direct negative effects of the massacre on the home ownership of Black Tulsans, as well as the spillover effects working through newspaper coverage, persist and actually widen in the second half of the 20th Century.
See our related piece in the Atlantic (5/24/21).
Published Papers
Refugees From Dust and Shrinking Land: Tracking the Dust Bowl Migrants
With Henry Siu
Journal of Economic History, December 2018
Also available as NBER Working Paper No. 22108
Abstract: We construct longitudinal data from the U.S. Census records to study migration patterns of those affected by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. We document three principal results. First, inter-county migration rates were much higher in the Dust Bowl than elsewhere in the U.S. This "excess migration" is due to the fact that individuals who were otherwise unlikely to move (e.g., those who were married, those with young children), were equally likely to move from the Dust Bowl. Second, relative to other occupational groups, farmers were the least likely to move from the Dust Bowl; this relationship between mobility and occupation was unique to that region. Third, the westward push from the Dust Bowl to California was unexceptional; migrants from the Dust Bowl were no more likely to move to California than migrants from other parts of the U.S.
See the media coverage at the Wall Street Journal, PBS Newshour, and the Chicago Booth Review.
With Joseph Ferrie
Economic Journal, July 2018
Abstract: Intergenerational mobility has been a topic of persistent interest in sociology and, increasingly, in economics. Nearly all of these studies focus on fathers and sons. The possibility that intergenerational mobility is more than a simple two-generational AR(1) process has been difficult to assess because of the lack of the necessary multi-generational data. We remedy this shortcoming with new data that links grandfathers, fathers, and sons in Britain and the U.S. between 1850 and 1910. This permits an analysis of mobility across three generations in each country and a characterization of the differences in those patterns across two countries for which we have found substantial differences in two-generation mobility in previous work. We find that, in both countries, grandfathers mattered, at least in an empirical sense and perhaps causally. Even controlling for father’s occupation, grandfather’s occupation significantly influenced the occupation of the grandson. For both Britain and the U.S. in the second half of the nineteenth century, therefore, assessments of mobility based on two-generation estimates significantly overstate the true amount of long run social mobility.
See the media coverage in The Economist (Feb 9, 2013), and my follow-up blog post on the Economist.com (Feb 14, 2013).
Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S. Since 1850
With Joseph Ferrie
American Economic Review, June 2013 (lead article)
JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23469614
Abstract: The U.S. tolerates more inequality than Europe and believes its economic mobility is greater than Europe's, though they had roughly equal rates of intergenerational occupational mobility in the late twentieth century. We extend this comparison into the nineteenth century using 23,000 nationally-representative British and U.S. fathers and sons. The U.S. was more mobile than Britain through 1900, so in the experience of those who created the U.S. welfare state in the 1930s, the U.S. had indeed been "exceptional." The U.S. mobility lead over Britain was erased by the 1950s, as U.S. mobility fell from its nineteenth century levels.
Online Appendix
See the media coverage on NPR's All Things Considered (July 3, 2013).
See the comments by Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald and by Michael Hout and Avery M. Guest in the next issue of the AER (August, 2013)
And our reply to those comments:
Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S. Since 1850: Reply
With Joseph Ferrie
American Economic Review, August 2013
JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42920639
Abstract: We respond to several criticisms by Avery Guest and Michael Hout and Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald to Jason Long and Joseph Ferrie. We do not dispute Guest and Hout's characterization of the importance of total mobility in addition to relative mobility. We find much in their additional analyses that supports our original findings. In response to Xie and Killewald, we discuss the limitations of our data and the conceptualization of mobility.
The Surprising Social Mobility of Victorian Britain
European Review of Economic History, February 2013
JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43299728
Abstract: This paper derives new estimates of social mobility in England and Wales between 1851 and 1901, using a large new dataset of fathers and sons linked across censuses from 1851–1881 and 1881–1901. Mobility rates were substantially greater than has been previously estimated, to the extent that mobility in the 1850s was only slightly less than in the 1970s. The development of mass public education in England after 1870 thus had surprisingly modest effects over the long run. Earnings mobility increased moderately for the first generation under public education (1881–1901), but did not increase over the course of the twentieth century.
With Joseph Ferrie
Economic Journal, March 2007
JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/4625499
Abstract: Intergenerational occupational mobility was substantially higher in the U.S. than in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, as social commentators noted at the time and as new longitudinal data demonstrate. Since the Second World War, however, there have been no discernible differences in this type of mobility between these two economies. Using new longitudinal data on 10,000 nationally-representative U.S. and British father and son pairs followed over two twenty year intervals in the late nineteenth century (the 1860s and 1870s, and then the 1880s and 1890s), we examine how this convergence occurred. The U.S. remained substantially more mobile then Britain through 1900, but the margin by which U.S. mobility exceeded British mobility fell over the last two decades of the nineteenth century (as British mobility rose slightly) and was entirely erased by the 1950s (as mobility decreased in both countries but fell by more in the U.S. than in Britain).
Socioeconomic Return to Primary Schooling in Victorian England
Journal of Economic History, December 2006
JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/4501112
Abstract: In this paper I provide a micro-level analysis of primary schooling in Victorian England. Using a new dataset of school-age males linked between the 1851 and 1881 population censuses, I examine the determinants of childhood school attendance and the impact of attendance on adult labor market outcomes. I find that schooling had a positive effect on adult occupational class and that the associated wage gains were likely to have outweighed the cost of schooling. However, this effect was small relative to father's class, and the effect of education on earnings appears to have been small relative to modern results.
Rural-Urban Migration and Socioeconomic Mobility in Victorian Britain
Journal of Economic History, March 2005
JSTOR: www.jstor.org/stable/3875041
Abstract: This paper analyses rural-urban migration in Great Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Using a new dataset of 28,000 individuals matched between the 1851 and 1881 population censuses, I examine the selection process and treatment effect of migration, controlling for the endogeneity of the migration decision. I find that urban migrants were positively selected - the best of the rural labor pool - and that the economic benefits of migration were substantial. Migrants responded to market signals, and labor markets were largely efficient; however, not all gains from migration were exploited, potentially indicating some degree of inefficiency.
With Joseph Ferrie.
Entry in Joel Mokyr (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Unpublished Papers
With Joseph Ferrie
Posted February, 2013
Abstract: The occupational mobility experienced by immigrants in the nineteenth century has been difficult to assess because of a lack of both information on their pre-migration occupations and information on a comparable group of individuals who were observed at the same origin but did not migrate. We take advantage of new samples of Americans linked 1860-1880 & 1880- 1900, British linked 1861-81 & 1881-1901, and British-American migrants linked 1861-1880 & 1881-1900 to compare the experience of migrants from Britain to the U.S. to both those who remained in Britain and those who were always located in the U.S. We assess the selectivity of migration and explore several of the mechanisms through which the intergenerational mobility of migrants exceeded that of both those they left behind in Britain and those they joined in the U.S.
Geographic and Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S., 1850-1881
With Joseph Ferrie
Abstract: Using longitudinal data on individual males linked between censuses separated by 30 years, we examine patterns of geographic and occupational mobility in the last half of the nineteenth century for two industrializing economies: Britain (1851-81) and the U.S. (1850- 80). We find considerably higher rates of geographic mobility in the U.S. Though the frequency of moves was similar (roughly two thirds moved over 30 years in each country), moves were ten times as great in distance in the U.S. Upward occupational mobility between fathers’ and sons’ occupations and between an individual’s first and last jobs was considerably more frequent in the U.S. For example, only one in five sons of unskilled fathers in the U.S. at the start of the 1850s failed to attain a higher status job by the start of the 1880s; the corresponding figure for Britain was nearly one in two. Upward mobility was associated more strongly with education in Britain than in the U.S. Background characteristics more generally were better predictors of occupational attainment in Britain than in the U.S.