------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (August 2006)  
  
Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L.   
Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright, editors, _Historical   
Statistics of the United States, Volume Two: Work and Welfare_. New   
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv + 964 pp. $825 (for the   
five-volume set), ISBN: 0-521-58540-6.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Thomas N. Maloney, Department of Economics,   
University of Utah.  
  
  
This book distills into one massive but handy volume the efforts of   
an inestimable number of researchers to quantify the development of   
labor market outcomes and living standards in U.S. history. It   
contains nearly ten thousand data series (or columns of data), spread   
across nearly one thousand pages, covering the following topics:   
"labor," including labor force participation, occupations, wages,   
hours and working conditions, union participation, and household   
production; slavery; education; health; economic inequality and   
poverty; social insurance and public assistance; and nonprofit,   
voluntary, and religious entities. (The other four volumes in the   
_Historical Statistics_ project cover "population," "economic   
structure and performance," "economic sectors," and "governance and   
international relations.")  
  
While the agglomeration of all these data series is the obvious   
purpose of this project, the book also contains a series of essays   
introducing the data on each topic and providing context. These   
essays are uniformly well-written and useful. They are also quite   
accessible, which should make this volume an important resource for   
interested groups beyond the scholarly community. While the essays   
share these qualities, they also vary in their purposes and strengths.  
  
A few of the essays provide an extensive amount of analytical   
discussion in addition to introducing the data series on a given   
topic. Susan B. Carter's essay on "Labor" is practically a short   
course in U.S. economic history, examining the rise in living   
standards over time as it relates to increases in labor force   
participation and increases in the productivity of employed workers.   
Linda Barrington and Gordon M. Fisher's essay on "Poverty," while   
narrower in its focus, is similar in that it provides a very   
extensive, analytical discussion of changes in the concept of poverty   
over time and the implications of these changes for the measurement   
of poverty.  
  
One of the main virtues of a reference work like this is that it can   
integrate related material that exists in many disparate and perhaps   
obscure original sources. A few of the essays (and their related data   
series) are especially valuable in this way, including Robert A.   
Margo's contribution on "Wages," William A Sundstrom's piece on   
"Hours and Working Conditions," Lee A. Craig's essay on "Household   
Production," Stephen T. Ziliak and Joan Underhill Hannon's "Public   
Assistance: Colonial Times to the 1920s," and Peter Dobkin Hall and   
Colin B. Burke's essay on "Nonprofit, Voluntary, and Religious   
Entities."  
  
In other chapters, the data come largely from well-known sources.   
Nearly all of the material on occupations, for instance, comes from   
the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) Census samples,   
and much of the information on social welfare and social insurance   
programs in the twentieth century comes from the _Social Security   
Bulletin_. Even in these cases, though, the essays (by Matthew Sobek   
on "Occupations" and by Price V. Fishback and Melissa A. Thomasson on   
"Social Welfare: 1929 to the Present") provide very useful insights   
into the proper interpretation of the numbers and changes in their   
meaning over time.  
  
I would single out Claudia Goldin's essay on "Education" as being   
particularly valuable as a guide to the use of the included data.   
Goldin provides an appendix to her essay in which she consolidates   
her discussion of sources, comments on how these series relate to   
those provided in prior editions of _Historical Statistics_, and also   
guides researchers to the best sources for future updates of these   
series. I hesitate to suggest this, having some sense of the   
gargantuan effort already expended on this work, but if any ongoing   
revisions are planned for the online version of this project, a brief   
appendix for each section, following Goldin's model, would be a nice   
addition.  
  
I obviously can not comment in detail on all of the included data   
series. I will note that I was struck by the breadth of the material   
included, even given my high expectations (and the thickness of the   
volume). The material on "Health," overseen by Richard H. Steckel,   
goes well beyond the measures of well-being associated with   
anthropometric work and includes information on health care   
expenditure, the availability of hospitals and other health care   
facilities (and their use), insurance coverage, the supply of   
physicians and nurses, the prevalence of smoking and drug use, the   
composition of diets, and a number of other related phenomena.   
Similarly, Goldin's chapter on education incorporates a wealth of   
detail not only on educational attainment but on subjects studied in   
school, faculty and staff numbers, standardized test scores, and   
higher education costs.  
  
As inclusive as the volume is, though, there are some probably   
unavoidable holes. By design, national totals are emphasized, and   
very few of the series are presented in a geographically   
disaggregated way. In addition, some series that one might expect to   
find in this volume are presented elsewhere in the five-volume set   
and not repeated here. For instance, much of the material related to   
colonial-era slavery apparently appears in volume 5 ("Governance and   
International Relations"), chapter Eg ("Colonial Statistics"), and   
not in the "Slavery" chapter of this volume. This obviously should   
not be too great an inconvenience for individuals at institutions   
that acquire the complete five-volume set and the online version. I   
am certainly urging my university's library to do so.  
  
  
Thomas N. Maloney is an Associate Professor in the Department of   
Economics at the University of Utah. His research focuses on race,   
migration, and labor markets in the U.S. His recent work includes   
"Ghettos and Jobs in History: Neighborhood Effects on African   
American Occupational Status and Mobility in World War I-Era   
Cincinnati," Social Science History 29:2.  
  
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