Frontier and urban-industrial explanations of US occupational mobility in the late 1800s

Abstract

This paper analyzes US geographic differences over nine regions in patterns of occupational mobility between 1880 and 1900 among the National Panel Study (NPS) of white men in the age cohorts 5–14 and 25–34. Comparisons focus on father-to-son mobility for the younger age cohort as it reached adulthood, and on intra-generational movement in midlife for the older cohort. Levels of upward mobility vary positively in both cohorts with levels of regional urbanization, while, contrary to the “frontier thesis” of American historians, location in the most recently settled parts of the United States has little relationship to occupational mobility. Using log linear models, the paper analyzes the higher mobility of the urban regions. Inheritance of occupation across and within generations is relatively constant across urban regions. Most of the geographic variation is explained by differential occupational structure, especially the growth of a clerical/sales workforce in the urban regions.