J. David Hacker

Rethinking the "Early" Decline of Marital Fertility in the United States

In this article, I rely on new estimates of nineteenth-century mortality and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to construct new estimates of white fertility in the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike previous estimates that showed a long-term decline in overall fertility beginning at or before the turn of the nineteenth century, the new estimates suggest that U.S. fertility did not begin its secular decline until circa 1840. Moreover, new estimates of white marital fertility, based on “own-children” methods, suggest that the decline in marital fertility did not begin in the nation as a whole until after the Civil War (1861–1865).

Child naming, religion, and the decline of marital fertility in nineteenth-century america

Demographic historians have long suspected that cultural factors played an important role in the early decline of fertility in nineteenth-century America. Using the recently released 1850 and 1880 IPUMS samples, this article investigates correlates of marital fertility among native-born white women of native parentage, focusing on the relationship between religion and fertility. Two proxies of religious sentiment are found to be significantly correlated with marital fertility. First, county-level census data indicate that the presence of Congregationalists and Universalists was associated with lower marital fertility, while the presence of Lutherans was associated with higher marital fertility. Second, the proportion of own children with biblical names—believed to be a proxy of parental religiosity—is found to be positively associated with marital fertility. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that traditional religious beliefs were an impediment to the adoption of family limitation strategies.

Economic, Demographic, and Anthropometric Correlates of First Marriage in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States

Despite the importance of marriage for the economic and demographic history of the nineteenth-century United States, there are few published estimates of the timing and incidence of marriage and no published studies of its correlates before 1890, when the Census Office first tabulated marital status by age, sex, and nativity. In this article I rely on the 1860 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series census sample to construct national and regional estimates of white nuptiality by nativity and sex and to test theories of marriage timing. I supplement this analysis with two new public use samples of Civil War soldiers. The Gould sample, collected by the U.S. Sanitary Commission between 1863 and 1865, allows me to test whether height and body mass influenced white men’s propensity to marry. Additionally, a sample of Union Army recruits linked to the 1860 census, created as part of the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death project, allows me to combine suspected economic, demographic, and anthropometric correlates of marriage into a multivariate model of never-married white men’s entrance into first marriage. The results indicate that nuptiality was moderately higher in 1860 than it was in 1890. In contrast to previous studies that emphasize the primary importance of land availability and farm prices, I find that single women’s opportunity to participate in the paid labor force was the most important determinant of marriage timing. I also find modest support for the hypothesis that height affected men’s propensity to marry, consistent with the theory that body size was a sign to potential marriage partners of future earnings capacity and health.

Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790–1900

Abstract In this article, the author constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, he suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade. These estimates are fitted to new standards derived from the 1900–1902 rural and 1900–1902 overall death registration area life tables using a two-parameter logit model with fixed slope. The resulting decennial life tables more accurately represent sex- and age-specific mortality rates while capturing known mortality trends.

The impact of socio-economic status on net fertility during the historical fertility decline: A comparative analysis of Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and the USA.

We used micro-level data from the censuses of 1900 to investigate the impact of socio-economic status on net fertility during the fertility transition in five Northern American and European countries (Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the USA). The study is therefore unlike most previous research on the historical fertility transition, which used aggregate data to examine economic correlates of demographic behaviour at regional or national levels. Our data included information on number of children by age, occupation of the mother and father, place of residence, and household context. The results show highly similar patterns across countries, with the elite and upper middle classes having considerably lower net fertility early in the transition. These patterns remain after controlling for a range of individual and community-level fertility determinants and geographical unobserved heterogeneity.

Cultural demography: New England deaths and the Puritan perception of risk.

This study examines the perception of the risk of death among New Englanders in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America and compares it with the actual risk of death using the life table concepts developed by demographers. Emphasis is on the relationship between actual and perceived risks of death. The authors conclude that although the actual risk of death changed radically over time as the mortality transition evolved the perceptions of Puritan ministers and others of the individual mortality risk did not. The demographic implication of this failure to understand the significance of this change in mortality is discussed and some modern parallels concerning the gap between perceived and actual risk of death are noted.

New estimates of census coverage in the United States, 1850-1930

Despite growing reliance on census data for historical research in the United States, there has been little systematic evaluation of census quality. This article relies on back-projection methods, new estimates of nineteenth-century mortality, and the 1850-1940 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) samples to estimate age-and sex-specific net census underenumeration of the native-born white population in the United States in the 1850-1930 censuses. National and section of birth estimates are constructed. In general, the results suggest slightly higher net undercounts for native-born white males relative to native-born white females, slightly higher net undercounts in the South, and a modest trend toward greater census coverage over time. A few censuses stand out as anomalous. The 1870 census suffered a higher net rate of omission than any other census. The net undercount was especially high in the South, probably reflecting the unsettled conditions in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The net undercount was not nearly as great as nineteenth-century observers speculated and subsequent historians have long believed, however. The 1880 census appears to have achieved the most complete coverage of the native-born white population before 1940.

Trends and Determinants of Adult Mortality in Early New England: Reconciling Old and New Evidence from the Long Eighteenth Century

Despite decades of research, demographic historians are still uncertain about mortality trends and determinants in early New England. Although researchers agree that New England mortality was low relative to other regions of early America in the seventeenth century, they disagree about the direction of mortality trends over the course of the eighteenth century. Community-based reconstitution studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s at first seemed to provide strong evidence of a decline in adult life

Spatial Aspects of the American Fertility Transition in the Nineteenth Century

The American fertility transition is unusual in comparison with historical transitions in other currently developed nations. The decline came very early, dating from about 1800 and took place from very high levels of fertility, a crude birth rate of 55 and a total fertility rate of about 7.0 for the white population in 1800. Further, the fertility transition began long before the sustained decline in mortality, dating from approximately the 1870s. Finally, the transition occurred in a predominantly agrarian and rural nation, although birth rates declined in both rural and urban places. Using a new database that supplements basic population census measures with other demographic, agricultural and manufacturing data, age-specific child-woman ratios can be calculated at the county level files for 1800 to 1860. This chapter examines patterns of geographic dispersion of white child-woman ratios, estimates structural spatial regression models and assesses spatial autocorrelation and clustering. Spatial autocorrelation was significant for variation by longitude (east-west) but not latitude (north-south). Low fertility counties were clustered in 1,800 and 1,810, while high fertility counties were more often found together later. Finally, fertility was less spatially patterned in longer settled and newly settled counties than in transitional areas.

Ready, Willing, and Able? Impediments to the Onset of Marital Fertility Decline in the United States

This study relies on IPUMS samples of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses, aggregate census data, and the timing of state laws criminalizing abortion to construct regional estimates of marital fertility in the United States and estimate correlates of marital fertility. The results show a significant lag between the onset of marital fertility decline in the nation’s northeastern census divisions and its onset in western and southern census divisions. Empirical models indicate the presence of cultural, economic, and legal impediments to the diffusion of marital fertility control and illustrate the need for more inclusive models of fertility decline.