9309689 Ferrie The purpose of this research is create a new data set of Americans linked across the 1850, 1860, and 1870 federal censuses. Though the interest of scholars in longitudinal data sets such as the Panel Study on Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Surveys has grown enormously over the past twenty five years, there are few comparable historical data sets that allow us to follow the experiences of individuals over several decades. The recent creation of indexes to the 1850 and 1870 federal censuses makes it possible to create such historical data sets. In this project, a sample of native-born Americans linked from a recently created Public Sample for the 1850 census to the 1860 census will be created and their economic mobility compared to mobility of immigrants analyzed in a previous study. In addition, the sample of immigrants and the new sample of native born will also be linked to the 1870 census. The creation of this new data set will be invaluable to scholars interested in understanding the dynamics of economic mobility and how various groups progressed economically in the U.S. from 1850 to 1870, a period characterized by the rapid growth of industrialization and urbanization. ***
