Individual Life Chances, 1850-1910: A Norwegian-American Example

Norwegian-American farm children who came of age during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Midwest faced an era of declining real wages and increasing land prices. Two data sets constructed from parish records, community genealogies, and the United States federal census illustrate structural inequalities in marital opportunity and length of residence in the natal family, according to the sex and birth order of children. Utilizing time-dependent proportional hazards models, the results indicate that earlier-born sons and daughters were more likely to marry and that daughters tended to leave home earlier than their brothers. The results also indicate that marriage, for sons and daughters alike, was more likely among children who left the rural settlement of their parents.