Robert A Margo
Biographic Data
| ID | 244716 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert A Margo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert A |
| FAMILY NAME | Margo |
| SIGNATURE | MARGO R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2709-7490 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 459 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
De-skilling: Evidence from late nineteenth century American manufacturing
Digitizing Carroll D. Wright’s “Hand and Machine Labor” Study
We describe our digitization of a uniquely detailed study of 19 th century production methods assembled by the United States Department of Labor (1899). The staff spent five years collecting and assembling data on the production of hundreds of highly specific products (as well as some services) at the production operations level using traditional artisanal (“hand”) methods and by the (then) most modern “machine” methods, measuring productivity in…
JUE Insight: Condominium development does not lead to gentrification
Industrialization and urbanization in nineteenth century America
Mechanization Takes Command: Powered Machinery and Production Times in Late Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing
During the nineteenth century, U.S. manufacturers shifted away from the "hand labor" mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to "machine labor," which was increasingly concentrated in steam-powered factories. This transition fundamentally changed production tasks, jobs, and job requirements. This paper uses digitized data on these two production modes from an 1899 U.S. Commissioner of Labor report to estimate the frequency and impact…
Gallman revisited: Blacksmithing and American manufacturing, 1850–1870
"Automation" of Manufacturing in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Hand and Machine Labor Study
Recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics have generated a robust debate about the future of work. An analogous debate occurred in the late nineteenth century when mechanization first transformed manufacturing. We analyze an extraordinary dataset from the late nineteenth century, the Hand and Machine Labor study carried out by the US Department of Labor in the mid-1890s. We focus on transitions at the task level from hand to machine…
The integration of economic history into economics
The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy
Temin’s latest book shares a proclivity for big ideas with recent blockbuster economic tomes like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass., 2017) or Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Princeton, 2017). But it is vastly shorter and (blessedly) lighter to carry than Piketty’s or Gordon’s.Following a brief introduction, The Vanishing Middle Class divides into three sections of four chapters each, a fo…
Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality
New benchmark estimates of Black-White income ratios for 1870, 1900, and 1940 are combined with standard post-World War census data. The resulting time series reveals that the pace of racial income convergence has generally been steady but slow, quickening only during the 1940s and the modern Civil Rights era. I explore the interpretation of the time series with a model of intergenerational transmission of inequality in which racial differences i…
Racial Differences in Health in the United States: A Long-Run Perspective
The United States has a long and ongoing history of racial inequality. This chapter surveys the literature on one aspect of that history: long-run trends in racial differences in health. We focus on standard measures such as infant mortality and life expectancy but also consider available data on specific diseases and chronic conditions. Our basic conclusion is that large improvements have occurred in the average health of African Americans durin…
A silver lining to white flight? White suburbanization and African–American homeownership, 1940–1980
In Memorium: Robert W. Fogel
Robert W. Fogel was a visionary economic historian, generous mentor, and eternal optimist whose works and lectures have informed and incited for more than half a century and whose writings will continue to do so for decades to come. He died on June 11, 2013 in his eighty-sixth year. He had co-taught a graduate course at the University of Chicago that quarter and in the weeks before he died he was planning his fall 2013 teaching. "I've often told …
Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth: Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850–1860
Using a newly developed geographic information system transportation database, we study the impact of gaining access to rail transportation on changes in population density and the rate of urbanization between 1850 and 1860 in the American Midwest. Differences-in-differences and instrumental variable analysis of a balanced panel of 278 counties reveals only a small positive effect of rail access on population density but a large positive impact o…
Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth: Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850-1860
For generations of scholars and observers, the "transportation revolution," especially the railroad, has loomed large as a dominant factor in the settlement and development of the United States in the nineteenth century.There has, however, been considerable debate as to whether transportation improvements led economic development or simply followed.Using a newly developed GIS transportation database we examine this issue in the context of the Ame…
Race, segregation, and postal employment: New evidence on spatial mismatch
Steam power, establishment size, and labor productivity growth in nineteenth century American manufacturing
The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values
In the 1960s many American cities experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. This article examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Census tract data for a sm…
The impact of the Civil War on capital intensity and labor productivity in southern manufacturing
Capital deepening and the rise of the factory: The American experience during the nineteenth century1
Between 1850 and 1880, capital per worker in United States manufacturing increased on average by at least 75 per cent, even after taking account of declining capital goods prices. During this same period, production shifted from small, labour-intensive artisan shops to large capital-intensive factories. Similar changes have occurred in many other countries at the same stage of industrialization. Establishment-level data from the federal censuses …
Slavery in the Development of the Americas
Slavery in the Development of the Americas brings together work from leading historians and economic historians of slavery. The essays cover various aspects of slavery and the role of slavery in the development of the southern United States, Brazil, Cuba, the French and Dutch Caribbean, and elsewhere in the Americas. Some essays explore the emergence of the slave system, and others provide important insights about the operation of specific slave …
Skill Intensity and Rising Wage Dispersion in Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing
We study the correlates of the monthly establishment wage-the average monthly wage at the establishment level-and changes in wage dispersion between plants using a model of manufacturing developed by Goldin and Katz and data from manuscript censuses of manufacturing. We find that wages were decreasing in establishment size, but increasing in capital intensity and use of steam power. We also find an increase in inequality in the establishment wage…
Productivity in manufacturing and the length of the working day: Evidence from the 1880 census of manufactures
Part-Year Operation in Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing: Evidence From the 1870 and 1880 Censuses
We examine the extent and correlates of part-year manufacturing during the late nineteenth century using unpublished data from the manuscripts of the 1870 and 1880 censuses of manufactures. These are the earliest comprehensive estimates available on this topic. Although the typical manufacturing plant operated full-time, part-year operation was not uncommon. Indeed, the likelihood of part-year operation varied across industries and location and w…
Women's Work: American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920
Journal Article Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650– 1920 Get access Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650– 1920. By Perlmann Joel and Margo Robert A.. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. x, 188 pp. $32.00, isbn0-226-66039-7.) Kathleen C. Berkeley Kathleen C. Berkeley University of North CarolinaWilmington, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History,…
The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health
In recent years the nutritional adequacy of the slave diet has received increasing attention from historians. Scholars have analyzed a wide array of sources such as the manuscript censuses of agriculture and population, the ex-slave narratives, diaries, plantation account books, and agricultural and medical journals to shed new light on the quantities, varieties, and nutritional content of foods consumed by slaves (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Owens…
Heights of Native-Born Whites During the Antebellum Period
This paper uses data on height by age drawn from Civil War muster rolls to analyze the nutritional status of the native-born white population during the antebellum period. Preliminary regression results reveal significant differences in adult heights across occupations, regions, urban-rural and migrant status, and birth cohorts. The economic and demographic implications of these findings are also explored
The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values
In the 1960s many American cities experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. This article examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the riots' impact on the value of central-city residential property, and especially on black-owned property. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that the riots depressed the median value of black-owned property between 1960 and 1970, with little or no rebound in the 1970s. Census tract data for a sm…
Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition
Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, Roderick Floud, Gerald Friedman, Robert A. Margo, Kenneth Sokoloff, Richard H. Steckel, T. James Trussell, Georgia Villaflor, Kenneth W. Wachter, Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 14, No. 2, Hunger and History: The Impact of Changing Food Production and Consumption Patterns on Society (Autumn, 1983), pp. 445-481
Race, segregation, and postal employment: New evidence on spatial mismatch
Race and Home Ownership: A Century-Long View
Explaining the postwar suburbanization of population in the United States: The role of income
The Growth of Wages in Antebellum America: New Evidence
The records of the United States Army, which hired civilian workers in the nineteenth century, have produced a large sample of wage rates. New estimates of nominal daily wage rates from 1820 to 1856 are presented. There is no evidence of a long-term increase in the skill differential. The growth of real wages in the Northeast appears to have been slower and more erratic than previously thought. Regional trends in wages are consistent with other e…
Skill Intensity and Rising Wage Dispersion in Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing
We study the correlates of the monthly establishment wage-the average monthly wage at the establishment level-and changes in wage dispersion between plants using a model of manufacturing developed by Goldin and Katz and data from manuscript censuses of manufacturing. We find that wages were decreasing in establishment size, but increasing in capital intensity and use of steam power. We also find an increase in inequality in the establishment wage…
Productivity in manufacturing and the length of the working day: Evidence from the 1880 census of manufactures
Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s
Recent research on labor markets in the 1930s has shifted attention from aggregate to disaggregate time series and towards microeconomic evidence. The paper begins by reviewing the conventional statistics of the United States labor market during the Great Depression and the paradigms to explain them. It then turns to recent studies of employment and unemployment using disaggregated data of various types. The paper concludes with discussions of re…
The Microeconomics of Depression Unemployment
Microeconomic evidence reveals that the incidence and duration of unemployment in the 1930s varied significantly within the labor force. Long-term unemployment, which was especially high by historical standards, may have been exacerbated by federal relief policies
The poor at birth: Birth weights and infant mortality at Philadelphia's almshouse hospital, 1848–1873
Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality
New benchmark estimates of Black-White income ratios for 1870, 1900, and 1940 are combined with standard post-World War census data. The resulting time series reveals that the pace of racial income convergence has generally been steady but slow, quickening only during the 1940s and the modern Civil Rights era. I explore the interpretation of the time series with a model of intergenerational transmission of inequality in which racial differences i…
Steam power, establishment size, and labor productivity growth in nineteenth century American manufacturing
Part-Year Operation in Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing: Evidence From the 1870 and 1880 Censuses
We examine the extent and correlates of part-year manufacturing during the late nineteenth century using unpublished data from the manuscripts of the 1870 and 1880 censuses of manufactures. These are the earliest comprehensive estimates available on this topic. Although the typical manufacturing plant operated full-time, part-year operation was not uncommon. Indeed, the likelihood of part-year operation varied across industries and location and w…
The Labor Force Participation of Older Americans in 1900: Further Results
The Rental Price of Housing in New York City, 1830–1860
Advertisements from antebellum New York City newspapers are used to estimate hedonic indices of the rental price of housing. Rents varied with the quality of housing and its location, suggesting a well-defined market for rental housing. Controlling for housing characteristics and location, the relative price of housing rose between 1830 and 1860
Inequality, poverty, and history
Women's Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920
This text blends quantitative evidence with historical narrative to show that distinctive regional school structures and related cultural patterns account for the initial regional difference in proportions of female teachers in schools in America
Work Relief and the Labor Force Participation of Married Women in 1940
Economic analysis of the labor supply of married women has long emphasized the impact of the unemployment of husbands-the added worker effect. This article re-examines the magnitude of the added worker effect in the waning years of the Great Depression. Previous studies of the labor supply of married women during this period failed to take account of various institutional features of New Deal work relief programs, which reduced the size of the ad…
Did Railroads Induce or Follow Economic Growth: Urbanization and Population Growth in the American Midwest, 1850-1860
For generations of scholars and observers, the "transportation revolution," especially the railroad, has loomed large as a dominant factor in the settlement and development of the United States in the nineteenth century.There has, however, been considerable debate as to whether transportation improvements led economic development or simply followed.Using a newly developed GIS transportation database we examine this issue in the context of the Ame…
Capital deepening and the rise of the factory: The American experience during the nineteenth century1
Between 1850 and 1880, capital per worker in United States manufacturing increased on average by at least 75 per cent, even after taking account of declining capital goods prices. During this same period, production shifted from small, labour-intensive artisan shops to large capital-intensive factories. Similar changes have occurred in many other countries at the same stage of industrialization. Establishment-level data from the federal censuses …
"Automation" of Manufacturing in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Hand and Machine Labor Study
Recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics have generated a robust debate about the future of work. An analogous debate occurred in the late nineteenth century when mechanization first transformed manufacturing. We analyze an extraordinary dataset from the late nineteenth century, the Hand and Machine Labor study carried out by the US Department of Labor in the mid-1890s. We focus on transitions at the task level from hand to machine…
A silver lining to white flight? White suburbanization and African–American homeownership, 1940–1980
Race Differences in Public School Expenditures: Disfranchisement and School Finance in Louisiana, 1890-1910
The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health
In recent years the nutritional adequacy of the slave diet has received increasing attention from historians. Scholars have analyzed a wide array of sources such as the manuscript censuses of agriculture and population, the ex-slave narratives, diaries, plantation account books, and agricultural and medical journals to shed new light on the quantities, varieties, and nutritional content of foods consumed by slaves (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Owens…
Heights of Native-Born Whites During the Antebellum Period
This paper uses data on height by age drawn from Civil War muster rolls to analyze the nutritional status of the native-born white population during the antebellum period. Preliminary regression results reveal significant differences in adult heights across occupations, regions, urban-rural and migrant status, and birth cohorts. The economic and demographic implications of these findings are also explored
Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition
Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, Roderick Floud, Gerald Friedman, Robert A. Margo, Kenneth Sokoloff, Richard H. Steckel, T. James Trussell, Georgia Villaflor, Kenneth W. Wachter, Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 14, No. 2, Hunger and History: The Impact of Changing Food Production and Consumption Patterns on Society (Autumn, 1983), pp. 445-481
Teacher salaries in black and white”: The south in 1910
Race, Educational Attainment, and the 1940 Census
Decreases in the racial schooling gap have been shown to account for one-third of the increase in the black-white income ratio from 1930 to 1970. But the usual measure of the gap, based on census educational attainment data, is flawed. Data on school enrollment rates and months of school attended reveal that schooling levels of blacks born in the late nineteeth century were far lower than census data indicate. With the corrections proposed, the n…
Accounting for Racial Differences in School Attendance in the American South, 1900: The Role of Separate-but-Equal
Robert A. Margo, Accounting for Racial Differences in School Attendance in the American South, 1900: The Role of Separate-but-Equal, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 661-666
The Growth of Wages in Antebellum America: New Evidence
The records of the United States Army, which hired civilian workers in the nineteenth century, have produced a large sample of wage rates. New estimates of nominal daily wage rates from 1820 to 1856 are presented. There is no evidence of a long-term increase in the skill differential. The growth of real wages in the Northeast appears to have been slower and more erratic than previously thought. Regional trends in wages are consistent with other e…
Who Were America's Teachers: Toward a Social History and a Data Archive
(1989). Who Were America's Teachers?: Toward a Social History and a Data Archive. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 68-73
The poor at birth: Birth weights and infant mortality at Philadelphia's almshouse hospital, 1848–1873
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History
The interrelation among race, schooling, and labor market opportunities of American blacks can help us make sense of the relatively poor economic status of blacks in contemporary society. The role of these factors in slavery and the economic consequences for blacks has received much attention, but the post-slave experience of blacks in the American economy has been less studied. To deepen our understanding of that experience, Robert A. mines a we…
Asia's next giant: South Korea and late industrialization
The Microeconomics of Depression Unemployment
Microeconomic evidence reveals that the incidence and duration of unemployment in the 1930s varied significantly within the labor force. Long-term unemployment, which was especially high by historical standards, may have been exacerbated by federal relief policies
The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century
The era of wage stretching has been a current focus, but we direct attention here to a decade of extraordinary wage compression—the 1940s. Wages narrowed by education, job experience, and occupation, and compression occurred within cells. The 90–10 differential in the log of wages for men was 1.45 in 1940 but 1.06 in 1950. By the late 1980s it returned to its 1940 level, thus restoring a dispersion of 50 years ago. World War II and the National W…
Explaining the postwar suburbanization of population in the United States: The role of income
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History. National Bureau of Economic Research Series
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History
Journal Article Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History. By Robert A. Margo. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. x + 164 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-226-50510-3.) Get access Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History. By Margo Robert A.. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. x + 164 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-226-50510-3.) Joe M. Richardson Joe M. Richardson Florida State University Search for other wor…
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History
Race and Schooling in the South, 1880-1950: An Economic History
The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress
Inequality, poverty, and history
Race and Schooling in the South, 1890-1940: An Economic History
The Labor Force Participation of Older Americans in 1900: Further Results
Employment and Unemployment in the 1930s
Recent research on labor markets in the 1930s has shifted attention from aggregate to disaggregate time series and towards microeconomic evidence. The paper begins by reviewing the conventional statistics of the United States labor market during the Great Depression and the paradigms to explain them. It then turns to recent studies of employment and unemployment using disaggregated data of various types. The paper concludes with discussions of re…
Work Relief and the Labor Force Participation of Married Women in 1940
Economic analysis of the labor supply of married women has long emphasized the impact of the unemployment of husbands-the added worker effect. This article re-examines the magnitude of the added worker effect in the waning years of the Great Depression. Previous studies of the labor supply of married women during this period failed to take account of various institutional features of New Deal work relief programs, which reduced the size of the ad…
Economics (48 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Demographic economics (23 works) · Geography (23 works) · Political science (23 works) · Economic growth (22 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (19 works) · Labour economics (19 works) · Demography (17 works) · History (15 works)