IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/31671.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Breakthroughs in Historical Record Linking Using Genealogy Data: The Census Tree Project

Author

Listed:
  • Kasey Buckles
  • Adrian Haws
  • Joseph Price
  • Haley E.B. Wilbert

Abstract

The Census Tree is the largest-ever database of record links among the historical U.S. censuses, with over 700 million links for people living in the United States between 1850 and 1940. These high-quality links allow researchers in the social sciences and other disciplines to construct a longitudinal dataset that is highly representative of the population. In this paper, we describe our process for creating the Census Tree, beginning with a collection of links contributed by the users of a free online genealogy platform. We then use these links as training data for a machine learning algorithm to make new matches and incorporate other recent efforts to link the historical U.S. censuses. Finally, we introduce a procedure for filtering the links and adjudicating disagreements. Our complete Census Tree achieves match rates between adjacent censuses that are between 69 and 86% for men, and between 58 and 79% for women. To demonstrate the advantages of the Census Tree, we extend the work of Abramitzky, Boustan, Jácome, and Pérez (2021) to include intergenerational mobility estimates for additional immigrant nationalities and for women.

Suggested Citation

  • Kasey Buckles & Adrian Haws & Joseph Price & Haley E.B. Wilbert, 2023. "Breakthroughs in Historical Record Linking Using Genealogy Data: The Census Tree Project," NBER Working Papers 31671, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31671
    Note: CH DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w31671.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jennifer R. Withrow & Kendall A. Houghton & Eva Lyubich & Mary Munro & Suvy Qin & John L. Voorheis, 2024. "The Census Historical Environmental Impacts Frame," Working Papers 24-66, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Berger, Thor & Karadja, Mounir & Prawitz, Erik, 2025. "Cities and the Rise of Working Women," Working Paper Series 1516, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    3. Philipp Ager & Casper Worm Hansen & Peter Z. Lin, 2023. "Medical Technology and Life Expectancy: Evidence from the Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria," Working Papers 0241, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    4. Anna Aizer & Gabrielle Grafton & Santiago Pérez, 2025. "Daughters as Safety Net? Family Responses to Parental Employment Shocks: Evidence from Alcohol Prohibition," NBER Working Papers 33346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Daniela Vidart, 2024. "Revisiting the Link Between Electrification and Fertility: Evidence from the Early 20th Century United States," Working papers 2024-03, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    6. Philipp Ager & Viktor Malein, 2024. "The Long-Term Effects of Charity Nurseries: Evidence From Early 20th Century New York," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_596, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • N01 - Economic History - - General - - - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31671. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.