This paper uses improved source data to test various theories of U.S. antebellum fertility decline. In the first part of the analysis, we rely on child-woman ratios and other county-level aggregate data from the population and economic censuses of 1800 to 1860 and the agricultural and manufacturing censuses of 1840-1860 to evaluate a number of hypotheses. Data on churches in 1850 and 1860 provide some indications of ideational differences across counties. We supplement these commonly-used data in a number of ways. We include, for example, new estimates of urbanization and the geographic areas of the counties in all census years. More critically, for the 1850 and 1860 analysis, we include aggregated estimates of nuptiality constructed with the 1850 and 1860 IPUMS samples. We are thus able to determine whether identified correlates of child-woman ratios in the antebellum period remain significant when nuptiality is included in the modelin other words, to suggest whether the correlates of child-woman ratios act as Malthusian or neo-Malthusian adjustments. We take this analysis one step further in the second part of the analysis, where we rely on the 1850 and 1860 IPUMS samples to model marital fertility at the individual level.

In this article, I rely on new estimates of nineteenth-century mortality and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to construct new estimates of white fertility in the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike previous estimates that showed a long-term decline in overall fertility beginning at or before the turn of the nineteenth century, the new estimates suggest that U.S. fertility did not begin its secular decline until circa 1840. Moreover, new estimates of white marital fertility, based on own-children methods, suggest that marital fertility decline did not begin in the nation as a whole until after the Civil War (1861-1865).

The authors describe a public use microdata sample of the 1860 slave population of the United States created at the Minnesota Population Center. They discuss the key substantive issues that quantitative historians are likely to address with the data set, such as the demography of slavery, patterns in slaveholding, and miscegenation. They outline the sample design, data-entry procedures, variable availability, and documenation of the final data set.

I rely on the 1850-1880 IPUMS samples to construct national and regional estimates of male and female age at first marriage and the proportion remaining lifelong bachelors and spinsters for synthetic cohorts of the white population. National estimates of nuptiality have been made recently by Catherine Fitch and Steven Ruggles for most census years between 1850 and 1990, but the results are limited to the native-born population (Fitch and Ruggles 1999). National estimates for the foreign-born population and regional estimates of the timing and incidence of marriage are made here for the first time. In addition to describing trends and differentials in nuptiality, I test several theories of marriage timing in rural areas with multivariate logistic regression models. The results suggest that many of the factors typically associated with marital fertility trends and differentials-availability of inexpensive farmland, literacy, nativity, occupation-are correlated with age at first marriage.

This paper uses two-census methods to estimate life tables for the native-born white population of the United States between 1850 and 1860. In particular, I rely on the Preston-Bennett census-based method of mortality estimation and the 1850 and 1860 IPUMS samples to construct abridged life tables by sex for ages 10 and above. I then use Brass's two-parameter logit model and existing life tables from the 1901 Death Registration Area to smooth the life tables values and to estimate infant and childhood mortality. In contrast to other recent studies of nineteenth-century U.S. mortality, the new estimates indicate that white females did not enjoy a significant advantage in life expectancy over white males and that northern-born whites had higher life expectancies than southern-born whites.

Although it is well known that the American Civil War resulted in the death of over 620,000 men of military age, little is known about the war's long-term demographic and social consequences. This dissertation uses newly created IPUMS samples of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 federal censuses to investigate the impact of the American Civil War on white birth rates and the timing and incidence of white marriage. Despite the large number of men killed in the conflict, demographic analysis indicates that the war had no lasting impact on women's marriage prospects. The war did cause a short-term deficit of approximately 1.2 million white births, but birth rates soon returned to the level predicted by their long-term trend. Although the wartime birth deficit was smaller in absolute numbers in the South than in the North, the percentage of the expected number of births was almost two times larger because of the South's smaller population base. The difference probably reflects the higher proportion of southern men who participated and died in the Civil War than northern men, and the greater economic stresses and uncertainties in the Confederate South. The dissertation also examines the long-term decline in nineteenth-century birth rates in more detail than has been heretofore possible. Estimates are made of sex- and age-specific census underenumeration, and the results are used to help construct own-child estimates of total fertility and total marital fertility. The results suggest that white women in the United States not effectively truncating childbearing until after 1850. In 1860, however, white women in the Northeast census divisions were limiting their number of births, and women in other northern regions began controlling fertility soon thereafter. There is no clear evidence that white women in the South, however, were practicing effective stopping behavior as late as 1880. In addition to region, a number of demographic and economic factors were found to be correlated with marital fertility, including age, occupation of spouse, land availability, and proxies of religion and religiosity

Suggests some possible uses of the 1860 and 1870 United States Censuses of Population samples and provides background information on the construction of the samples and their availability. Applications of the samples for historical research; Particular strengths of the 1860 and 1870 samples; Versions of the 1860 and 1870 samples.

Demographic historians have long suspected that cultural factors played an important role in the early decline of fertility in nineteenth-century America. Using the recently released 1850 and 1880 IPUMS samples, this article investigates correlates of marital fertility among native-born white women of native parentage, focusing on the relationship between religion and fertility. Two proxies of religious sentiment are found to be significantly correlated with marital fertility. First, county-level census data indicate that the presence of Congregationalists and Universalists was associated with lower marital fertility, while the presence of Lutherans was associated with higher marital fertility. Second, the proportion of own children with biblical names--believed to be a proxy of parental religiosity--is found to be positively associated with marital fertility. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that traditional religious beliefs were an impediment to the adoption of family limitation strategies.

The Historical Census Project at the University of Minnesota has recently added microdata samples for the 1860 and 1870 federal censuses to the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, which is a database with information on about 1% of the US population from 1850 to 1990. These new samples enhance the usefulness of the existing 1850 and 1880 microdata samples and complete the continuous series of population information from 1850 to 1990.

Discusses the process by which the Social History Research Laboratory at the University of Minnesota designed the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). The Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) consist of random selections of information that have been taken from the US decennial censuses since 1850. These samples are useful sources of information for the decade from which they were taken, but because each census records data differently, much of the information is incompatible with other censuses. The Social History Research Laboratory has converted these PUMS into an integrated form called IPUMS. By designing common coding systems for such items as household composition, familial relationships, occupations, and geographical location, the IPUMS allows a researcher to chart social changes over time. Versions of the IPUMS data series were released in 1993 and 1994, and the final version will be released in November 1995 by the National Archives. A three-volume set will also be released that provides detailed documentation for the data series and user information.

In this article, I rely on new estimates of nineteenth-century mortality and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to construct new estimates of white fertility in the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike previous estimates that showed a long-term decline in overall fertility beginning at or before the turn of the nineteenth century, the new estimates suggest that U.S. fertility did not begin its secular decline until circa 1840. Moreover, new estimates of white marital fertility, based on "own-children" methods, suggest that the decline in marital fertility did not begin in the nation as a whole until after the Civil War (1861-1865).