Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: An Economic Analysis of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund

本项目将评估来自美国的预付旅费形式的经济援助对19世纪从不列颠群岛移民到美国西部的时间的影响。方法本研究使用永久移民基金公司(PEF)和耶稣基督后期圣徒教会(也称为摩门教徒或后期圣徒)的记录来创建19世纪从英国到现在犹他州的移民样本。样本将在年龄、家庭结构和职业方面代表其他19世纪移居西部边境的移民。这些移民往往比留在美国东部的同龄人年龄更大，技能更好。他们也更有可能已婚并带着孩子旅行。以家庭为单位的个人记录将包括每个移民的出生年份、原籍地区、移民前职业和洗礼年份的信息，以及接受经济援助的金额(如果有的话)。对于19世纪的摩门教徒来说，洗礼不仅意味着皈依一种新的信仰，还意味着重新安置到犹他州的承诺。PEF贷款类似于希望移民的人与他们已在美国的家庭成员之间的非正式协议。在美国预付的PEF贷款是作为一种非正式贷款提供的，在和解后偿还。将使用横截面和面板数据技术来确定接受财政援助是否倾向于加速移民，换句话说，是为了缩短洗礼和移民之间的延迟。托比特分析将被用来估计影响贷款收入的因素。智力价值本研究对现有文献有两个主要贡献。首先，这项研究将超越一般趋势和汇总统计的讨论，以估计预付机票对个人和家庭的影响。这是可能的，因为关于谁接受了财政援助以及他们收到了多少资金的异常详细的记录。其次，对现代圣人记录的研究为19世纪移民到美国的一个有趣的子集提供了一个独特的视角：人们作为家庭旅行。这些记录可以用来检验费里在《扬基队现在》(牛津大学出版社，1999)中提出的假设，即大家庭倾向于搬到西部，因为他们更富有。更广泛的影响这项研究涉及各种历史和现代机构，包括连锁移民、难民重新安置、学生贷款和小额贷款。例如，仿效PEF的永久教育基金于2001年成立，为发展中国家的弱势个人提供助学贷款。

This project will estimate the impact of financial assistance from America, in the form of prepaid passage, on the timing of emigration in the nineteenth century from the British Isles to the Western United States.MethodsThis research uses records of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company (PEF) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons or Latter-day Saints) to create a sample of nineteenth century immigrants from the U.K. to present-day Utah. The sample will be representative of other nineteenth century migrants to the western frontier both in age, household structure, and occupation. These immigrants tended to be older and better skilled than their contemporaries who stayed in the eastern U.S. They were also more likely to be married and travel with children. Individual-level records, linked as households, will include information on each emigrant's birth year, region of origin, pre-emigration occupation, and year of baptism, as well as the amount of financial assistance received, if any. For Mormons in the eighteen hundreds, baptism indicated not only conversion to a new faith but also commitment to relocate to Utah. PEF loans were similar to informal agreements between people desiring to emigrate and their family members already in the U.S. Passage, prepaid in the U.S., was offered as an informal loan to be repaid after settling. Cross-sectional and panel data techniques will be used to determine whether the receipt of financial assistance tended to hasten emigration, in other words to shorten the delay between baptism and emigration. Tobit analysis will be used to estimate the factors affecting loan receipt.Intellectual MeritThis research makes two major contributions to the existing literature. One, this research will go beyond a discussion of general trends and summary statistics to estimate the effect prepaid passage had on individuals and households. This is possible because of the unusually detailed records of who received financial aid and how much they received. Two, the study of Latter-day Saint records provides a unique look at an interesting subset of nineteenth century immigrants to the U.S.: people traveling as families. The records can beused to test the hypothesis proposed by Ferrie in Yankees Now (Oxford University Press, 1999) that larger families tended to move west because they were wealthier. Broader ImpactsThis research is related to a variety of historical and modern institutions, including chain migration, refugee resettlement, student loans, and micro-lending. For example, the Perpetual Education Fund, modeled after the PEF, was established in 2001 to provide student loans for disadvantaged individuals in developing countries.