American Households During the Assimilation Era 1900-1940

尽管对美洲印第安人来说，同化时代留下了重要的历史遗产，但由于人口普查局历史上列举美洲原住民的方式存在局限性和不一致之处，这一时代的历史数据非常难以获取和使用。这严重限制了对美洲原住民经济、社会和社会史的高质量定量研究。研究人员不得不几乎完全依赖预订汇总数据，许多美洲原住民仍然无法研究自己的过去，普通人口也是如此。这一拟议的研究项目旨在通过结合新的数据收集和现有数据的记录链接来解决历史人口普查中的四个主要数据挑战。该项目将：(1)解决1900-1940年美洲原住民人口统计中的不一致问题；(2)补充人口普查--用更多的部落信息列举个人记录；(3)将个人和家庭联系起来；(4)将个人一级的普查数据与其他来源的个人一级数据联系起来。一旦完成，新的数据将使研究人员能够回答一系列因果关系明确的问题，这些问题涉及同化时代的政策对美国原住民人口的影响。该项目将对重建期间的美洲原住民家庭进行大规模和创新的数据收集工作，将数据数字化，并向研究人员免费提供。该项目对现有数据集进行了四大改进：(A)解决1900-1940年全面统计人口普查中对美洲原住民的历史统计中的不一致之处；(B)利用关于历史统计地区的位置的信息，用关于一个人所属部落的信息补充人口普查所统计的美洲原住民个人记录；(C)利用新的记录链接方法，将不同人口普查波中的美洲原住民个人和家庭联系起来，在嘈杂的个人层面信息和更高质量的家庭结构信息之间取舍；以及(D)将人口普查中的个人记录与其他个人一级数据来源的记录联系起来，即保留名单和印度寄宿学校名单。一旦这些数据改善完成，私人投资者指数将专注于三个到目前为止还无法回答的问题：印第安人土地分配对美洲原住民家庭的影响，印第安人寄宿学校对美洲原住民家庭和儿童的影响，以及联邦强加的制度安排对保留地/部落作为现代政治的长期成功的影响。这项研究的结果将揭示和更好地理解美国原住民的经济和社会问题。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Despite important historical legacies of the Assimilation Era for American Indians, historical data from this era are exceedingly difficult to access and use because of limitations and inconsistencies in how the Census Bureau historically enumerated Native Americans. This has severely constrained high quality quantitative research on Native American economic, social, and social history. Researchers have had to rely almost exclusively on reservation-aggregate data, and many Native Americans remained hamstrung from studying their own past, so has the general population. This proposed research project is designed to resolve four major data challenges in the historical Census, through a combination of novel data collection and record-linkage of existing data. The project will: (i) resolve inconsistencies in the enumeration of Native Americans from 1900-1940; (ii) supplement Census-enumerate person-records with more tribal information; (iii) link individual and households across waves; and (iv) link individual level census data to individual level data from other sources. Once completed, the new data will enable the researchers to answer a range of causally identified questions on the effects of Assimilation-era policies on Native American populations. This project will undertake a massive and innovative data collection effort on Native American families during reconstruction, digitize the data, and make it available freely to researchers. The project makes four major improvements to existing data set: (a) to resolve inconsistencies in the historical enumeration of Native Americans in the Full Count Censuses from 1900--1940; (b) to supplement Census-enumerated Native American person-records with information on which tribe a person belonged to, using information on the location of historical enumeration districts; (c) to link Native American individuals and households across Census waves using new record linkage methodology that trades off noisy individual-level information against higher-quality household-structure information; and (d) to link person-records in the Population Census to records in other individual-level data sources, namely reservation rolls and Indian boarding school rolls. Once these data improvements are completed, the PIs will focus on three questions that have hitherto been “unanswerable”: the effect of Indian land allotment on Native American households, the effect of Indian boarding schools on Native American households and children; and the effects of federally imposed institutional arrangements on the long-run success of reservations/tribes as modern-day polities. The results of this research will shed light and a better understanding of Native American economics and social issues.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.