Our samples

We've been collecting data for the Early Indicators project for more than two decades. Here are the major samples we've collected.

• Union Army - This was our original sample of over 39,000 Union Army veterans. These men were mostly rural and white.
• USCT - We originally collected a sample of about 6,000 black soldiers who served in the US Colored Infantry. We discovered that the sample was too small, and collected 15,000 more soldiers. This sample consisted of men who were from the north and south and slave and free.
• Urban - This sample was based on the most populous US cities in 1900. We collected more than 12,000 soldiers who enlisted in these cities: Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. With this sample we can look at the differences between urban and rural soldiers as well as intra-urban effects.
• Related to this sample was the Historical Urban Ecological (HUE) sample in which we collected and mapped information about each of the cities.
• Andersonville - We collected a sample of 1,000 soldiers who were imprisoned at Andersonville and survived to the year 1900. With this sample, we can examine later-life effects of acute malnutrition and exposure to disease due to the soldiers' imprisonments.
• Oldest Old - This soon-to-be-released sample consists of about 2,000 soldiers who lived to extreme old age, that is age 95+.
• VCC - Veterans' Children's Census. This is the sample you are currently working on. We are taking a subsample of our Union Army soldiers, about 8,500 and our USCT soldiers, about 4,500 and searching for census and death information for their children. We want to look at the intergenerational transmission of health and socioeconomic effects.

NBER working paper

A new NBER working paper has just been released. It is titled Persistent Social Networks: Civil War Veterans who Fought Together Co-Locate in Later Life. It was written using our EI data, and co-authored by our principal investigator, a senior investigator, and a member of our Vienna staff. You may read it here.

Here is the abstract from the website:

At the end of the U.S Civil War, veterans had to choose whether to return to their prewar communities or move to new areas. The late 19th Century was a time of sharp urban growth as workers sought out the economic opportunities offered by cities. By estimating discrete choice migration models, we quantify the tradeoffs that veterans faced. Veterans were less likely to move far from their origin and avoided urban immigrant areas and high mortality risk areas. They also avoided areas that opposed the Civil War. Veterans were more likely to move to a neighborhood or a county where men from their same war company lived. This co-location evidence highlights the existence of persistent social networks. Such social networks had long-term consequences: veterans living close to war time friends enjoyed a longer life.