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Working Paper
The Effect of Immigration on Local Labor Markets: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure
In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas due to variation in the national origin mix of their immigrant populations. U.S.-born workers in areas losing immigrants did not gain in income score relative to workers in less exposed areas. Instead, in urban areas, European immigrants were replaced with internal migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Canada. By contrast, farmers shifted toward capital-intensive agriculture, and the immigrant-intensive mining ...
Working Paper
Occupational Switching During the Second Industrial Revolution
During the Second Industrial Revolution, in the late nineteenth century, the proliferation of automation technologies coincided with substantial job creation but also a “hollowing out” of middle-skilled job opportunities, which historically offered reliable paths to prosperity. We use recently linked U.S. census data to document three main facts: (i) declining demand for middle-skilled labor in manufacturing corresponded to greater reallocation of workers into comparatively less-skilled occupations; (ii) older workers were more likely to switch to unskilled physical labor; (iii) younger ...
Working Paper
The Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains
In the late 19th century, the North American bison was brought to the brink of extinction in just over a decade. We show that the bison?s slaughter led to a reversal of fortunes for the Native Americans who relied on them. Once the tallest people in the world, the generations of bison-reliant people born after the slaughter were among the shortest. Today, formerly bison-reliant societies have between 20-40% less income per capita than the average Native American nation. We argue that federal Indian policy that limited out-migration from reservations and restricted employment opportunities to ...
Working Paper
Immigration Restrictions and the Wages of Low-Skilled Labor: Evidence from the 1920s
This paper examines how the U.S. immigration restrictions of the 1920s affected the wages of low-skilled workers using newly digitized annual wage data from 1910 to 1930. Exploiting variation across local labor markets, we find that wages for low-skilled workers rose faster in areas more affected by the restrictions. These wage effects emerged early in the 1920s and persisted throughout the decade across manufacturing, construction, and agricultural sectors. Our findings help explain previously documented internal migration patterns and demonstrate how reduced immigration affected labor ...
Working Paper
Immigration Disruptions and the Wages of Unskilled Labor in the 1920s
An era of mass immigration into the United States ended with the onset of World War I in Europe, followed by the passage of restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924. We analyze various sources of wage data collected in the 1910-1929 period to explore the impact of this significant disruption of the flow of immigration on the wages of unskilled labor. Our approach to identification entails examining differences in wages across local labor markets and industries differentially exposed to the disruptions in immigration due to different ethnic compositions oftheir immigrant populations in ...
Working Paper
America’s Rise in Human Capital Mobility
How did the US become a land of opportunity? We show that the country’s pioneering role in mass education was key. Unlike previous research, which has focused on father-son income correlations, we incorporate both parents in a new measure of intergenerational mobility that considers multiple inputs, including mothers’ and fathers’ human capital. To estimate mobility despite limitations in historical data, we introduce a latent variable method and construct a representative linked panel that includes women. Our findings reveal that human capital mobility rose sharply from 1850 to 1950, ...