Migration Responses to Conflict: Evidence from the Border of the American Civil War

Abstract

and Yale, as well as participants at meetings of the Canadian Network for Economic History and the Social Science History Association for helpful comments. We also thank Zvezdomir Todorov for excellent research assistance The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Sample-Selection Bias and Height Trends in the Nineteenth-Century United States

“…The relevance to desertion suggests relevance to enlistment. Eli, Salisbury, and Shertzer (2018) show that voting patterns in 1860 are predictive of the enlistment decisions of Kentuckians in the Civil War and of the subsequent migration of Civil War veterans.…”

“…This variable, which is informative on a county's views on slavery and other central issues in the election, is a proxy for individuals' political ideology. By way of example, voting data for this election and others of the era have been shown to be important in the military desertion decision during the Civil War Kahn, 2003, 2007) and in determining migration of Civil War veterans in the postbellum period (Eli, Salisbury, and Shertzer, 2018). Second, I allow the effects of covariates on the probability of enlisting in the military to vary based on whether an individual's birth year made him eligible to serve during the Civil War (i.e., by whether he was born in 1846 or earlier), whereas the equation determining height is assumed to be time-invariant.…”

Migration and Institutions: Exit and Voice (From Abroad)?

“…Eli et al . () illustrate this, by showing that migration is one consequence that followed American Civil War which had opposed Union and Confederate Armies. The social divisions created by the American Civil War between the warring parties, determined later the place chosen by the civil war veterans and their families to live.…”

Persistent social networks: Civil war veterans who fought together co-locate in later life

“…Thus both selection (of the types of people who moved to different areas) and treatment effects (the social interactions that take place among people who live in a given place) meant that the Tiebourt sorting of veterans re-inforced a pro-Union narrative of the Civil War. A similar ideological sorting among Confederate veterans, as documented by Eli, Salisbury, and Shertzer (2016), would have reinforced ideological divisions in the country.…”

“…Costa and Kahn (2007a) find that Union Army deserters avoided pro-Lincoln (in the 1864 election) areas. Eli, Salisbury, and Shertzer (2016) find that Union Army veterans from Kentucky were more likely to leave pro-Confederate counties for pro-Union areas whereas Confederate veterans did the opposite.…”