Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S. Since 1850
By JASON LONG AND JOSEPH FERRIE
Web Appendix
Appendix 2: Linked Census Data
Whether the nineteenth century U.S. exhibited patterns of intergenerational mobility
different from those seen in Europe has been a source of persistent controversy throughout the
last half of the twentieth century. Though Thernstrom asserted his findings for Boston were
consistent with an “American Pattern,” others were less sanguine regarding mobility in the
nineteenth century. Summarizing the literature on intergenerational mobility in the past, Daniel
P. McMurrer, Mark Condon, and Isabel V. Sawhill (1997) conclude, “Overall, the existing
evidence suggests that mobility was likely not as great as suggested by popular literature and the
writings of Tocqueville on the openness of American society. Most of the rich during earlier
periods were apparently born rich.”
1
The principal difficulty with historical estimates of intergenerational mobility for the U.S.
is that they were most often constructed by observing a single community over a period of
decades. The only individuals whose occupational mobility could be observed were those who
1
In the study that is closest to ours in making explicit comparisons between the U.S. and Britain in the nineteenth
century using individuals linked across censuses (though using only individuals who remained in the same location
across several decades), Grusky (1987) concludes, “This case for ‘American Exceptionalism’ can be evaluated only
by comparing the data for Europe and America in the nineteenth century. It should be clear, however, that the
present study casts doubt on this interpretation [that current belief in high rates of mobility in the U.S. results from
rates that were indeed higher than those elsewhere in the past, though the U.S. rate some time ago converged to the
more general pattern], since the rates of mobility in the United States have increased over the last century.” (Grusky,
1987, p. 120) Though Grusky’s data make it possible for him to compare mobility over more than a century, there
are significant parts of the population excluded from the nineteenth century samples he employs because they are
based on the population that remained resident for a decade or more in a set of four cities and towns (Poughkeepsie,
NY; Holland, MI; Atlanta, GA; and Boston, MA). These samples necessarily exclude (1) anyone who migrated into
or out of any of these cities during the time period examined; (2) farmers and farm laborers living outside these
cities and towns (at time when half of the civilian labor force was employed in agriculture and most of them lived
outside cities and towns); and (3) any rural residents (at a time when more than three quarters of the U.S. population
still lived in places of fewer than 2,500 inhabitants).
1
remained in the community. It would be surprising if the movers and stayers did not have
systematically different patterns of occupational mobility, given the positive and often
substantial costs of migration. Occupational mobility measured using marriage records (a
common source for mobility measurement in Britain) suffers a different shortcoming: sons’
occupations are examined at different points in their careers than fathers’ occupations.
The new nineteenth century data used here for the U.S. and Britain is not limited to
individuals who remained in a place for a decade or more and examines sons’ and fathers’
occupations at similar ages, presenting a more representative picture of mobility than has
previously been available. The data were generated by following individuals across successive
census enumerations. The population censuses of Britain and the U.S. are generally regarded to
be the best sources of individual-level, nationally representative data from the nineteenth century
for those countries. However, the cross-sectional censuses do not provide the continuity over
time needed to study issues of mobility at the level of the individual. Two new sources have
made it possible to create the necessary continuity from the British and U.S. historical census
records. The Genealogical Society of Utah in conjunction with the Federation of Family History
Societies has computerized the individual-level records from the enumerators’ books of the 1881
Census of the Population of England, Wales, and Scotland and from the 1880 U.S. Federal
Population Census. These data make it possible to search for specific individuals in the 1881
British or 1880 U.S. census. To construct the data for this study, we searched for individuals
from two other censuses: the 1851 British and the 1850 U.S. census.
For Britain, we attempted to match all the English and Welsh born males age 25 and
below from the computerized two percent sample of the 1851 census compiled principally by
Michael Anderson, Brenda Collins, and Craig Stott. For the U.S. we attempted to match white
2
males age 25 and below from the 1850 Federal Census one percent public use sample.
2
We
employed a common matching technique for the British and U.S. data. Both countries’ censuses
provide information that either remains consistent between enumerations (name and birthplace)
or changes predictably (age) that can be used to identify a given individual in more than one
census. The British census has more specific information than the U.S. census on each
individual’s birthplace (parish in Britain, state in the U.S.). In the 1880 U.S. census, respondents
were asked to give the place of birth of their parents as well (state for those whose parents were
born in the U.S. and country for those whose parents were born abroad). This question was
missing entirely from the nineteenth century British census.
For Britain, in order to be considered a true match for an individual from 1851, an
individual from 1881 had to have either the same name or a close phonetic variation thereof (for
example, Aitken and Aitkin were considered to be equivalent), a year of birth different by no
more than five years, and the same county and parish of birth. For the U.S., the individual must
have had either the same name or a close phonetic variation thereof, provided the same state of
birth for himself (and his parents if they were present in 1850) in 1850 and 1880, and gave a year
of birth that differed by no more than three years.
3
The variation in birth year was allowed in
order to account for age misreporting, a fairly common phenomenon in nineteenth century
societies which lacked the systematic record keeping and where individuals often had only an
2
The 1851 data for Britain are from a 2% Public Use Sample available as Study No. 1316 from the U.K. Data
Archive at the University of Essex (http://www.dataarchive.ac.uk). It is a stratified two percent systematic cluster
sample from the enumerators’ books. For a full description see Anderson (1987). The complete 1881 census for
Britain was obtained as Study No. 3643 from the U.K. Data Archive. The 1880 U.S. file was obtained from the
North American Population Project (http://www.nappdata.org) and the 1850 U.S. 1% Public Use Sample was
obtained from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series available from the Minnesota Population Center
(http://www.ipums.org).
3
The proximity of surnames was assessed by first matching individuals whose surnames were grouped into the same
SOUNDEX code; see http://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/55.html. The names in the same
group were then examined to calculate the phonetic distance between them using the SPEDIS algorithm in SAS;
potential matches with SPEDIS scores greater than 30 were then discarded.
3
approximate idea of their age.
4
None of the matching information could be missing from an
individual’s record. Also, only unique matches were considered: if an individual from the
1850/51 sample had more than one match in the 1880/81 census, then that individual was
dropped.
5
Applying this matching process to 69,785 English and Welsh males age 25 and under
from the 1851 two percent sample yielded 14,191 men observed in Britain both in 1851 and
1881, a success rate of 20%. From a pool of 43,438 U.S. white males age 25 and under in 1850,
9,497 were found in the 1880 U.S. census, a 22 percent success rate. The inability to link every
observation from the initial public use sample (1850 for the U.S. and 1851 for Britain) is a
function of mortality (and out-migration from Britain) over the following thirty years, under-
enumeration in the terminal census (1880 for the U.S. and 1881 for Britain), and the inaccurate
recording in either the initial or terminal year by the census takers or by those who performed the
census transcriptions of the characteristics on which the linkage is based: name, year of birth,
and birthplace (for the individual as well as his parents in the U.S. and for the individual only in
Britain).
6
For the U.S., 69 percent of white, native-born males under age 25 survived from 1850 to
1880 (based on the survival of five-year age cohorts in the IPUMS 1850 and 1880 samples); for
4
The smaller margin of age reporting error for the U.S. matching process is in response to the less specific
birthplace information. For a discussion of age enumeration in the Victorian census, see Edward Higgs (1986).
5
The same procedure created the 1860-80, 1880-1900, and 1870-80 linked U.S. samples. In each case, the 1880
complete census files was used as the base sample, which was then linked to a one percent IPUMS sample (for
1860, 1870, or 1900). For the two twenty-year spans, males were age 33-39 in the terminal year to enhance
comparability with the twentieth century U.S. data; for the ten-year span, they were age 20-29 and age 45-59 in the
initial year, to enhance comparability with the original NLS cohorts of younger and older males. The same matching
algorithm as generated the 1850-80 linked file described above was used to identify matches, with the same
tolerances allowed to misspelling of names and misreporting of year of birth. These additional linked samples differ
from the general U.S. population in the same ways as the 1850-80 linked sample, with these differences again
eliminated by weighting.
6
Richard H. Steckel (1991) surveys research on the accuracy of nineteenth century U.S. population censuses.
4
Britain, 67 percent of males both survived from 1851 to 1881 and remained in Britain (based on
published population-by-age tables in B. R. Mitchell, 1962, p. 12). Estimates of under-
enumeration for the nineteenth century U.S. range from as high as 22% (John Adams and Alice
Bee Kasakoff, 1991) to as low as 9% (David Hacker, 2000). Though we lack estimates of the
extent of mis-reporting for names, birth years, and birth places, if we take the error in each of
these to be 5 to 10 percent and assume for simplicity that all of the factors preventing linkage
occur independently, we can calculate a set of projected linkage rates ranging from optimistic to
pessimistic.
7
For the U.S., the anticipated linkage rate ranges from (0.69)(0.91)(0.95)
10
=37.6%
(“optimistic”) to (0.69)(0.78)(0.90)
10
=18.8% (“pessimistic”).
8
The actual linkage rate for the U.S. is safely within this range, even without taking
account of the fraction of individuals who could not be uniquely matched (e.g. they were
matched to more than one individual in the 1880 census, and it was not possible to identify the
best match). In 1880, 1.5 percent of white, native-born males shared the same name, birth year,
birth place, and parents’ birthplaces with at least one other individual, while 80.5% were
uniquely identified by this set of characteristics. For the remaining 18%, there were several
individuals who had names that were phonetically close and birth years that were within three
years, but when an individual from the 1850 pubic use sample was matched to one of these
individuals, it was possible in these cases to rank the matches by the proximity of the name and
birth year, and choose the “best” match.
7
One of the few studies to report an estimate of mis-reporting for a characteristic contained in the U.S. population
census for the nineteenth century is Peter Knights (1971): he reports that 11 percent of those located in Boston in
both 1850 and 1860 reported a year of birth (inferred from age at the census) that differed by five or more years
between the two censuses. Steckel (1988) found that literacy was inconsistently classified for seven percent of
household heads located in both 1850 and 1860.
8
There are five characteristics that must be reported correctly (name, birth year, own birth place, father’s birth
place, and mother’s birthplace) in each of two censuses, so the proportion with correctly reported characteristics is
between (0.95)
10
(if each is reported with error 5% of the time) and (0.90)
10
(if each is reported with error 10% of the
time).
5