MPC Member Publications

This database contains a listing of population studies publications written by MPC Members. Anyone can add a publication by an MPC student, faculty, or staff member to this database; new citations will be reviewed and approved by MPC administrators.

Full Citation

Title: Restless in the Midst of their Prosperity: New Evidence on the Internal Migration of Americans, 1850-2000

Citation Type: Journal Article

Publication Year: 2004

Abstract: The quantity and character of internal migration in the American past is a contentious historiographical issue. Over a century ago, Frederick Jackson Turner pointed to westward migration as a safety valve that profoundly affected the nature of the Republic. With the closing of the frontier, Turner predicted, the population flow to the West would decline.1 Turner's twentieth-century critics argued that the greatest American population movement was not westward expansion, but rather urbanization, which accelerated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning in the 1960s, social historians using new quantitative approaches fleshed out the critique of Turner, arguing that high migration to and between urban areas in the nineteenth century did not result in improved economic opportunity.This article uses new evidence to reevaluate internal migration in the American past. Our three major findings are consistent with Turner's interpretation. First, we identify a U-shaped pattern of change: the nineteenth century had the highest overall levels of migration, followed by a decline in the first half of the twentieth century and a resurgence after World War II. Thus, by the time Turner wrote about the closing of the frontier, a dramatic decline in geographic mobility was already under way. The highest mobility in American history occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century, and there was a steady decline in interstate mobility until well into the twentieth century. Second, we show that the high levels of nineteenth-century migration resulted from long-distance westward migration to farms, whereas the high migration of the late twentieth century can be ascribed to white suburbanization and black Patricia Kelly Hall is a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, and Steven Ruggles is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History and Population Studies at the University of Minnesota. migration to northern cities. Finally, we look briefly at the relationship between geographic mobility and social mobility and find evidence suggesting that migration may have improved economic opportunity.

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Authors: Ruggles, Steven J; Hall, Patricia Kelly

Periodical (Full): Journal of American History

Issue: 3

Volume: 91

Pages: 829-846

Countries:

IPUMS NHGIS NAPP IHIS ATUS Terrapop