Mining Microdata: Economic Opportunity and Spatial Mobility in Britain, Canada and the United States, 1850-1911

Abstract: Since at least the nineteenth century Americans and Canadians have believed that their countries offer citizens better opportunities to get ahead in life than in Europe. Knowing how economic opportunities have changed over several generations is important for understanding social and economic change. Did economic opportunity change when there was less land available for farming in the West? How did changing patterns of internal and international migration affect opportunity?

A multi-disciplinary group of researchers from Britain, Canada and the United States will measure changes in economic opportunity in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in a project called 'Mining Microdata.' The researchers in the project are from the Universities of Minnesota, Alberta, Guelph, Montréal, Essex and Leicester.

The project uses census records from the 1850s, 1880s, and 1910s in Britain, Canada and the United States. In all three countries the census forms that families filled out were saved for future generations, without which this research cold not be done. Comparing the three countries offers a lot of possibilities for understanding economic opportunity. While each country was unique, each shared some similarities with one of the other countries, allowing the researchers to work out how changes such as industrialization, political structures, westward migration, and the growth of large cities affected people?s lives.

Starting with census records from the 1850s and 1880s the researchers will select a sample of boys living with their fathers, and then try to find the boys thirty years later in the censuses from the 1880s and 1910s when the boys are approximately the same age as their fathers were thirty years earlier. The researchers will measure economic opportunity by comparing the occupations of fathers and sons thirty years apart for two generations of men. They will compare economic opportunity between the different countries, and how economic opportunities changed between these two generations.

In terms of broader impacts this project will provide further information on the impact of economic opportunity and spatial mobility on social structure in Europe and North America. This research, therefore, is not only important to economic/ social historians and social scientists, but to policy makers and government officials as well. In addition, the project has sound plans for training graduate students and new researchers.

This grant was made as part of the Digging Into Data Challenge, an international competition designed to foster research collaboration across countries and to encourage innovative approaches to analyzing large data sets in the social sciences and humanities. In addition to the US research team, this project includes researchers from Canada and the United Kingdom.