Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Our long-run research objective is to create the first dataset that combines Vital Statistics and multiple U.S. censuses into an Early Twentieth Century Intergenerational, Longitudinal Database (ETCILD). ETCILD will ultimately comprise the largest collection of linked public US microdata records, joining individual birth and death Vital Statistics to other sources such as the 1880 to 1940 decennial censuses, the Death Master File (DMF), and World War I and II military records (MR).
These intergenerational microdata will contain information on children’s exact day and place of birth, the characteristics of their parents before they were born (linked from censuses predating the birth, including mothers). It will include information on the evolution of children’s living circumstances after they are born (linked to censuses after the birth) and also their own births and eventual mortality. These data will facilitate a multitude of new studies (with many new collaborators listed above) examining children over their life-course in large, national samples, and they will significantly reduce the costs to important social science research on long-run effects. Finally, they may prove promising in improving inter-censal link rates.

In preparation for the submission of an R01 to the NIH, we are requesting $20,000 from the PSC Pilot Grant Competition. The pilot will demonstrate linkage rates between the Vital Statistics data and complete 100 percent censuses from 1900 to 1940 for an individual state—a proof of concept that is critical for obtaining a large external grant to fund the remainder of this project.

Funding: PSC Pilot Funds