Mining Microdata: Economic Opportunity and Spatial Mobility in Britain, Canada and the United States, 1850-1911

摘要：至少从19世纪开始，美国人和加拿大人就一直认为，他们的国家为公民提供了比欧洲更好的出人头地的机会。了解几代人以来的经济机会是如何变化的，对于理解社会和经济变化很重要。当西部可供耕种的土地减少时，经济机会是否发生了变化？不断变化的国内和国际移徙模式如何影响机会？一个由英国、加拿大和美国的多学科研究人员组成的小组将在一个名为“挖掘微数据”的项目中衡量19世纪末和20世纪初经济机会的变化。该项目的研究人员来自明尼苏达大学、艾伯塔大学、圭尔夫大学、蒙雷亚尔大学、埃塞克斯大学和莱斯特大学。该项目使用了英国、加拿大和美国19世纪50年代、19世纪80年代和19世纪10年代的人口普查记录。在这三个国家，家庭填写的人口普查表格都被保存下来，留给子孙后代，没有这些表格，这项研究就无法完成。比较这三个国家为理解经济机遇提供了许多可能性。虽然每个国家都是独一无二的，但每个国家都与其他国家有一些相似之处，这使得研究人员能够弄清楚工业化、政治结构、西迁和大城市的发展等变化是如何影响人们的？S生活着。从19世纪50年代和19世纪80年代的人口普查记录开始，研究人员将选择与父亲一起生活的男孩样本，然后试图在19世纪80年代和19世纪10年代的人口普查中找到30年后的男孩，当时男孩的年龄与30年前的父亲大致相同。研究人员将通过比较两代男性父亲和儿子的职业差距30岁来衡量经济机会。他们将比较不同国家之间的经济机会，以及这两代人之间的经济机会是如何变化的。在更广泛的影响方面，这个项目将提供关于经济机会和空间流动对欧洲和北美社会结构的影响的进一步信息。因此，这项研究不仅对经济/社会历史学家和社会科学家很重要，而且对政策制定者和政府官员也很重要。此外，该项目还为培训研究生和新的研究人员制定了完善的计划。这笔拨款是挖掘数据挑战的一部分，这是一项旨在促进跨国研究合作的国际比赛，旨在鼓励以创新的方法分析社会科学和人文科学中的大数据集。除了美国的研究团队外，该项目还包括来自加拿大和英国的研究人员。

Abstract: Since at least the nineteenth century Americans and Canadians have believed that their countries offer citizens better opportunities to get ahead in life than in Europe. Knowing how economic opportunities have changed over several generations is important for understanding social and economic change. Did economic opportunity change when there was less land available for farming in the West? How did changing patterns of internal and international migration affect opportunity? A multi-disciplinary group of researchers from Britain, Canada and the United States will measure changes in economic opportunity in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in a project called "Mining Microdata." The researchers in the project are from the Universities of Minnesota, Alberta, Guelph, Montréal, Essex and Leicester. The project uses census records from the 1850s, 1880s, and 1910s in Britain, Canada and the United States. In all three countries the census forms that families filled out were saved for future generations, without which this research cold not be done. Comparing the three countries offers a lot of possibilities for understanding economic opportunity. While each country was unique, each shared some similarities with one of the other countries, allowing the researchers to work out how changes such as industrialization, political structures, westward migration, and the growth of large cities affected people?s lives. Starting with census records from the 1850s and 1880s the researchers will select a sample of boys living with their fathers, and then try to find the boys thirty years later in the censuses from the 1880s and 1910s when the boys are approximately the same age as their fathers were thirty years earlier. The researchers will measure economic opportunity by comparing the occupations of fathers and sons thirty years apart for two generations of men. They will compare economic opportunity between the different countries, and how economic opportunities changed between these two generations.In terms of broader impacts this project will provide further information on the impact of economic opportunity and spatial mobility on social structure in Europe and North America. This research, therefore, is not only important to economic/ social historians and social scientists, but to policy makers and government officials as well. In addition, the project has sound plans for training graduate students and new researchers.This grant was made as part of the Digging Into Data Challenge, an international competition designed to foster research collaboration across countries and to encourage innovative approaches to analyzing large data sets in the social sciences and humanities. In addition to the US research team, this project includes researchers from Canada and the United Kingdom.