Using Linked Census Records to Study Shrinking Cities in the United States from 1900 to 1940

Abstract

We develop a data-driven method for linking people in cities over time that can be used in any country that has data tracking the locations of individuals across multiple periods. We apply this process to United States Census data from 1900 through 1940 and find that, of the 1,000 largest cities in 1900, 15 percent experienced a decline in population by 1940. We also use the large data set for this same time period, linking more than 45 million people across adjacent census records to examine which types of people exit a shrinking city and how their eventual socioeconomic outcomes differ from those who stay. Nationally, we find that those who left shrinking cities had longer life spans, greater income, better jobs, and higher education than those who stayed. We note that the regional analyses tend to follow the positive national pattern while indicating the geographic place-based differences of the cities that lost population. We also show the relation of race to the tendency to migrate from different types of cities. This method for linking millions of individuals across censuses has the potential to reveal other important characteristics of past populations, such as multidecade migration patterns and household changes in various regions over time.