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The research community at the Institute includes visiting scholars, consultants, economists, research analysts, and research assistants. These scholars bring a diversity of backgrounds, interests, and expertise to research that deepens our understanding of economic opportunity and inclusion as well as policies that work to improve both.
Some economists sit poised at the computer, ready to dissect the latest government data drop. Institute visiting scholar William Collins, meanwhile, squints at scans of microfilm to understand the life of a farmer in the 1800s.
“When we work on questions about economic and social mobility, especially in the 19th century, we don’t always know how to characterize farmers,” said the Vanderbilt economic historian. “They can be rich or poor—the only thing you get from the census of population is the occupation.”
Many handwritten manuscripts from the U.S. Census of Agriculture were destroyed, but the 1880s survived—yielding rich detail, Collins said, if you have patience, research assistants, and a skilled co-author (in this case, Marianne Wanamaker). “The distribution of landholdings of farmers gives us insight into differences across regions and racial categories. It tells us who owned what. If you are interested in the origins of wealth disparities, that kind of data is really valuable.”
The current revolution in access to historic data—especially digitization of old census records—is a boon to Collins’ research, tracing long-ago patterns and policies to economic conditions today. “We are moving from a world of cross sections to a world where you have large, longitudinal datasets of people,” Collins said. “It will help us rewrite substantial portions of American labor-market and demographic history.”
The new census data helped Collins and former Institute visiting scholar Ariell Zimran interrogate an old view that still informs U.S. immigration debates, that immigrants from some countries are less likely to flourish. Instead, the evidence from 1850 to 1940 points to the jobs and skills of immigrants: Were they complementary to U.S.-born workers, and did the jobs offer upward mobility? Among immigrants and native-born Americans, unskilled laborers appear much more upwardly mobile over time than farmers.
The magazine of the opportunity & Inclusive Growth institute
The new data also allowed Collins to link Black father-son pairs starting in 1880, highlighting how low intergenerational mobility has sustained the enduring U.S. racial earnings gap. The recent digital census release for the 1950s will help further his study of the decades before the civil rights era, when states experimented with the first fair employment laws. This period is also the tail of the “Great Migration” of Black people moving north, a topic that still fascinates Collins 30 years after a college class sparked an interest in the Harlem Renaissance.
Economic history “connects the disparities of the past to the disparities of the present,” Collins said. “If you understand those mechanisms of perpetuation, maybe you can understand the levers you might pull as a policymaker to work in the other direction.”
This article is featured in the Spring 2023 issue of For All, the magazine of the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute
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Jeff Horwich is the senior economics writer for the Minneapolis Fed. He has been an economic journalist with public radio, commissioned examiner for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and director of policy and communications for the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. He received his master’s degree in applied economics from the University of Minnesota.
