Volume 1: Population

The expansiveness of the Millennial Edition is immediately apparent to those familiar with the Bicentennial Edition. Volume 1 of the Millennial Edition contains nearly 800 pages of information on population, vital statistics, migration (internal and international), family and household composition, and American Indians. By my count, the comparable sections of the Bicentennial Edition, where comparable sections exist, contain only about 120 pages.

Although most series in the Millennial Edition report national aggregates, the population counts of chapter Aa are also reported by city, metropolitan area, urbanized area, and state. The chapter, edited by Michael Haines, also includes new estimates of the Hispanic population from 1850 to 1990 (contributed by Brian Gratton, Myron Guttmann, and Elizabeth Wildsmith). This is the first appearance of a source-related theme that comes up several times in Volume 1—the Hispanic estimates are derived in large part from the micro-level census data available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series project (IPUMS). The micro-level data allow users to calculate essentially consistent series for populations or places that the original published census volumes do not tabulate separately. Throughout the volume, information from the “old” published census volumes and the “new” micro-level samples complement one another nicely.

In chapter Ab, Haines introduces the U.S. vital statistics data (fertility, mortality, marriage and divorce, life expectancy, and the like), identifies some of the major trends in U.S. demographic history, and points out areas of recent scholarly advance, statistical blind spots, and continuing debates. One could not have a better guide for the tour of American vital statistics, and nonspecialists certainly do need a guide. The chapter's introductory essay and the detailed table notes impart an appreciation for the range, complexity, and pitfalls of vital statistics measurement.

Joseph Ferrie edited the short but valuable chapter on internal migration. The census added a state-of-birth question in 1850, thereby providing the first statistical anchor for the characterization of internal mobility. In the 1940s, the census and the Current Population Survey began inquiring about recent geographic mobility, but in general economic historians who hope to study internal migration patterns face severe data constraints. Ferrie highlights the potential for linking individuals from one census date to the next to study geographic mobility, and in the introductory essay he includes some comparisons between his own 1850 to 1860 linked sample and late twentieth-century samples. Although not exploited in the Millennial Edition, the fully transcribed individual data (i.e., not a sample) from the 1880 Census are another promising source for forming such links, and I imagine that economic history will see a resurgence of internal mobility studies as a result.

Many of the Millennial Edition's chapters include chronologies that highlight important events and policies. These chronologies are one of my favorite features of the new edition. An especially helpful timeline appears in chapter Ad (edited by Robert Barde, Susan Carter, and Richard Sutch) and pertains to the history of international migration to the United States. The chapter's data tables report annual immigration counts (flows) by country of origin or birth, by age, by sex, and by occupation. They also report decennial counts from census enumerations of the foreign born (stocks), including their ability to speak English, their tendency to locate in cities, their fertility and homeownership rates, and their occupations. Americans' Nobel Prizes are broken down by the recipient's place of birth, a feature that academics will find especially interesting but that policymakers should probably note as well. Since 1980, 7 of 30 American recipients of the prize in physics were born elsewhere; in chemistry, 11 of 28 American recipients were born elsewhere. Additional information on admissions under various immigration programs, on naturalization by country of origin, and on deportation round out the statistical characterization of American immigration history.

The IPUMS data take center stage in Steven Ruggles's chapter on family and household composition. Ruggles is the prime architect of the IPUMS project, and he puts the resource to good use here. After pointing out important changes in family structure, which are dramatic in the late twentieth century, Ruggles provides a succinct introduction to the large interdisciplinary literature that addresses the issue.

The subsequent chapter, edited by Carter and Matthew Sobek, rearranges selected labor force, marital status, and education data so that they are reported by birth cohort rather than by time of observation. This cohort-based perspective is common in labor economics and demographic studies, and I am glad to see it make an appearance in the Millennial Edition. It is a compelling way to depict the experiences of subsequent cohorts as they moved through their lifecycle.

C. Matthew Snipp edited the final chapter of volume 1 which assembles a variety of data series pertaining to American Indians. This chapter deserves special attention, perhaps especially from nonspecialists who would like to incorporate information on Native Americans into their teaching of American history. The chapter contains the most coherent and compact collection of quantitative information that I have seen on the topic. It supplements the data series with maps that distinguish tribal territories (circa 1600 and 1995) and a timeline of the history of epidemic disease among Indians, based on work by Henry Dobyns (Their Number Became Thinned, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983). Historical Statistics is obviously not an historical atlas—its series emphasize national rather than local perspectives—but in general I would have welcomed more maps to complement the quantitative history that unfolds in the tables.

Volume 2: Work and Welfare

The second volume contains chapters on labor market variables, unions and work-related injuries, slavery, education, health, inequality and poverty, social insurance, and nonprofit entities. The first chapter starts with a 60 page tag-team essay by Carter and five associate editors (Lee Craig, Robert Margo, Joshua Rosenbloom, Matthew Sobek, and William Sundstrom). It would be a good place for a graduate student interested in labor history (or labor economics more generally) to start her reading. The chapter provides a quantitative overview of the major historical trends and discusses the range of data obstacles and opportunities. Among many other interesting tables, Thomas Weiss provides labor force counts covering 1800 to 1900; Sobek provides IPUMS-based detailed figures for labor force participation and employment by occupation and industry; and Margo organizes and reports the historical wage data, including his own skill and region-differentiated series for the antebellum period.

Chapter Bb is a comparatively short chapter on slavery. The essay by Stanley Engerman, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright includes a helpful chronology of emancipation (1761 to 1888). In addition to the expected information on the size of the slave population and slave prices, the chapter includes a table of information on slave insurrections starting in 1663, based on work by Marion D. De B. Kilson (“Towards Freedom” Phylon 24 [1964]). This is a more extensive collection of statistics than was printed in the previous edition of Historical Statistics, but given the size of the historical literature on the topic, readers might be surprised that there is not more information in the chapter. It turns out that some additional information on slavery is reported elsewhere in the Millennial Edition. For example, Richard Steckel reports on slave heights in Chapter Bd (on health statistics) and John McCusker's chapter on the colonial era includes some information on slave populations and prices.

Claudia Goldin edited the chapter on education (chapter Bc). Her introductory essay features a concise description of the three transformations of America's education system (the diffusion of publicly funded elementary schools, the high school movement, and mass higher education) and a chronology of major events in the history of American education policy. One of those events was the creation of the U.S. Bureau of Education in 1867 which (thankfully) started compiling national statistics on students, teachers, and schools. Goldin's essay is followed by 100 pages of carefully documented statistical tables on enrollments, teachers, school characteristics (e.g., length of school term and public-private distinction), graduation rates, test scores (starting in 1971), years of completed schooling, earnings reported by level of educational attainment, and school revenue and expenditure information. Like the chapter on labor market statistics, this chapter would be a natural starting point for anyone undertaking research on American education.

The subsequent chapter, edited by Richard Steckel, features two main kinds of information: series that describe the U.S. healthcare system (hospitals, practitioners, insurance, and expenditures) and series that describe Americans' health status (disease prevalence, disability, height, and body mass index). The chapter also provides information on health behaviors such as cigarette and food consumption. Of course, a good deal of health-related information is also contained in Chapter Ab (vital statistics) of volume 1, as discussed previously. From a historical perspective, the height information is especially useful because it dates well into the 1700s (for men), because so much health-related information is embedded in a population's average height, and because the mid-nineteenth-century decline in Americans' height is one of the more surprising and fascinating facts of American economic development. The chapter's concise and well-documented collection of historical statistics on the healthcare system is also a valuable resource.

Chapter Be combines information on economic inequality (edited by Peter Lindert) and poverty (edited by Linda Barrington and Gordon Fisher). The introductory essay on poverty statistics includes a summary of the history of poverty measurement in the United States, complete with tables that list and describe studies of American poverty from 1870 to 1962. Income inequality is difficult to measure at the national level before 1940, when the census first inquired about income, but the tables do include some of the recent, highly publicized work by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez that extends to 1913 (“Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 [2003]: 1–39). The chapter also includes estimates of wealth inequality across households from 1774 to 1998. The earlier chapter on labor includes estimates of wages by occupation and industry that often form the basis of economic histories of wage inequality trends.

The history of American social insurance and public assistance is described in chapter Bf, edited by Price Fishback with assistance from Joan Underhill Hannon, Melissa Thomasson, and Stephen Ziliak. The chapter's essay includes an informative history of American policy with respect to the poor, the old, the sick, and the unemployed. As is often the case in these volumes, one can learn a great deal from the copious notes associated with each table. Examples taken at (near) random are Fishback and Thomasson's description of the Black Lung Benefits program (p. 2-788) and Ziliak's description of efforts to replicate Stanley Lebergott's pauper support data (p. 2-724).

Peter Dobkin Hall edited the volume's final chapter (Bg) on “Nonprofit, Voluntary, and Religious Entities.” It is a fascinating collection of information on a segment of American life that usually remains in the shadows of quantitative economic histories. The range of information here makes it a difficult chapter to summarize. Topics include annual membership figures for fraternal organizations (e.g., the Elks and the Modern Woodmen of America), the numbers of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, annual church congregation measures by denomination, philanthropic and charitable giving, and some information on private, nonprofit educational institutions. I believe these series are new to Historical Statistics (that is, no comparable series appear in earlier additions), and they are a welcome extension of the statistical record of American society.

Volume 3: Economic Structure and Performance

Even by Millennial Edition standards, the third volume covers a lot of ground. The first several chapters report national accounts statistics and series of price indices, consumer expenditures, and savings and capital accumulation. The topics in the second half of the volume are more varied and include geography and the environment (chapter Cf), science, technology and productivity (chapter Cg), business organization (chapter Ch), and financial markets (chapter Cj).

Richard Sutch edited the chapters on national income statistics (Ca) and business cycles (Cb). Chapter Ca's essay highlights the history of national income and product accounting, including the major contributions of economic historians (such as Simon Kuznets) to the development of both the concepts and the substance of national accounting. The chapter features several alternative annual series (one of which is designated the “Millennial Edition series”) for real GDP dating back to 1790, as well as an index of industrial production that was recently compiled by Joseph Davis. Chapter Cb is a natural continuation of Ca and focuses on fluctuations in economic activity. The chapter features dates for business cycle troughs and peaks (again dating to 1790) and several series that report quarterly or monthly levels of output, employment, unemployment, wages, stock market indicators, interest rates, and money supply for the twentieth century.

Christopher Hanes edited the chapter on prices (Cc), along with associate editors Lindert and Margo. The essay strongly cautions users about the pitfalls of historical price data, a useful admonition for those tempted to cut-and-paste historical series into macroeconomic analyses without thinking hard about the statistics' origin, accuracy, and suitability for the task at hand. Most of the price series are from long-familiar sources, but the chapter does feature some relatively new series from Hanes (consistent wholesale price series), Margo (rents in New York City), and William Nordhaus (price of light).

Chapter Cd, edited by Lee Craig, begins with tables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (1929–1999) and from Stanely Lebergott (1900–1929) that contain annual information on expenditures for food, clothing, housing, furnishings, medical care, transportation, and more. These tables have a strong national-income-accounts flavor (and basis). The second main kind of information in the chapter is based on surveys of family consumption expenditures. The information is often tabulated by income, race, or occupation. The data are not available annually and are not exactly comparable from study to study, but they provide valuable perspectives on consumption heterogeneity across households of different income levels.

Sutch guides readers through the inter-related concepts and measures of saving, capital, and wealth in Chapter Ce. His essay also includes a succinct history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century saving trends and the economic history literature that studies the trends. Many of the historical saving series (dating to 1897) build on work by Goldsmith (A Study of Savings in the United States, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1955), complemented by later series from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Estimates of household net worth start in 1946 and were originally compiled by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Historical national wealth estimates, starting in 1850, again rely heavily on work by Goldsmith.

The subsequent two chapters were edited by Gavin Wright. Chapter Cf summarizes information on “Geography and the Environment” and chapter Cg focuses on “Science, Technology and Productivity.” The incorporation of some recent (mostly post 1960) information on pollution levels is an excellent addition to the Millennial Edition. My favorite part of chapter Cf is a collection of climate statistics (temperature and precipitation), organized by Myron P. Guttman and Timothy G. F. Kittel. Alas, a table on tornadoes, floods, and tropical cyclones that appeared in the Bicentennial Edition appears to have been left by the wayside in the new edition (or at least I failed to locate it). This is, of course, a minor omission in the grand scheme of things, but in the wake of Hurricane Katrina there may be an increased interest in the history of natural disasters and their aftermath.

Enormous increases in computing power and usage are perhaps the most salient technological changes since the Bicentennial Edition's publication in 1975. Although patent statistics (starting in 1790) and research and development expenditures (starting in mid-twentieth century) make up the bulk of chapter Cg's data series, there are two tables on computer purchases and processor speed that shed some light on trends in computing. I imagine that these tables will be significantly expanded if and when the next edition is produced to include, say, the proportion of households that own a personal computer, regional and income-based differences in computer ownership and usage, and measures of the intensive or extensive use of the internet by businesses and consumers. That said, a search of the Millennial Edition's index reveals that some information on household expenditures on computers and on the number of existing web sites appears elsewhere in the volumes. This serves as a simple reminder that while it is tempting to bypass the index when searching for a series (because the data are already arranged by topic), some statistical series may fit well in more than one chapter.

Naomi Lamoreaux provides an insightful discussion of the evolution of American business enterprises in Chapter Ch. Her essay includes a review of the twentieth-century intellectual history of the theory of the firm, a review of the relevant legal history, and, of course, a description of the rise of big business (plus a helpful timeline). A key point in her discussion is that it is exceedingly difficult to count “firms” in a way that corresponds closely to the theoretical concepts that economists articulate. For measurement, one must resort to legal definitions and classifications. The volume of information on firms expands greatly in the twentieth century as a consequence of the establishment of the federal income tax, and this expansion is clearly reflected in the chapter's data tables. There are, however, tables with counts of incorporations dating to the 1700s for some states.

With the assistance of several associate editors, Michael Bordo edited volume 3's largest chapter, including 236 pages of tables on American monetary and financial history. The scope of the information is reflected in the sub-essays that comprise the chapter's introduction: monetary aggregates (by Richard Anderson), monetary statistics before the era of national banking (by Hugh Rockoff), monetary policy (by Bordo and David Wheelock), financial institutions and their regulation (by Howard Bodenhorn and Eugene White), securities markets (by Peter Rousseau), and debt, the flow of funds, interest rates, and yields (by John James and Richard Sylla). As with many of the chapters, the data here reflect an enormous amount of careful scholarship that went into assembling and interpreting the quantitative history of American finance. Unlike the other chapters in the volume, the introductory remarks here do not use graphs to depict and summarize the course of the major historical series. I have noted above that timelines are sometimes used to great effect in the Millennial Edition to organize the long histories of particular aspects of American development. One might have been a very helpful accompaniment to this chapter's introduction to American money and finance.

Volume 4: Economic Sectors

The fourth volume is laid out in a sequence familiar to anyone who has worked with Standard Industrial Classification codes: agriculture, natural resource industries, construction, manufacturing, distribution (retail and wholesale trade), transportation, communications, and services and utilities. (Public administration, another standard classification, is covered in volume 5, and health, education, and finance are covered in volume 3.)

For the first chapter (Da, “Agriculture”) Alan Olmstead and a team of five associate editors (Julian Alston, Bruce Gardner, Philip Pardey, Paul Rhode, and Daniel Sumner) provide a sparkling introduction to the history of American agriculture. The essay includes five separate chronologies that highlight major technological and legislative events, and a narrative that emphasizes agriculture's economic dynamism. Research, innovation, technological diffusion, rapid productivity advance, and (sometimes perverse) government policies have long played key roles in the sector. The first set of data tables focuses on farms and farm structure since 1850; the second set focuses on acreage, production, and prices of crops and livestock; the third set focuses on outputs, inputs, and productivity; the fourth set details farm income and expenses; the fifth set details farm-related policies and related expenditures.

Chapter Db, edited by Gavin Wright, covers “natural resource industries” including mining, energy, fisheries, and forestry. Wright's research has illuminated the ways in which natural resources, and especially mineral resources, have interacted with technological capabilities in shaping American economic ascendance. His introductory essay features these same themes and also highlights data constraints and key institutions such as the legal environment, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the education of mining engineers. I will add one caveat here. Although it makes sense to have energy included in Chapter Db, I became confused when doing some recent research because statistics on electricity are split between volumes 3 and 4. Some of the consumer-related information is volume 3, but other key series on residential use (such as the proportion of households with electrical service and the average residential price) are located in this chapter of volume 4. This was the one and only time the index did not help me locate a series I figured must exist somewhere in the collection.

Construction, housing, and mortgage statistics appear in Chapter Dc, introduced and organized by Kenneth Snowden. In addition to the information provided in the introduction, Snowden provides copious documentation for each table. The first parts of the chapter emphasize construction activity (new buildings, input costs, workers employed). In the rest of the chapter, as Snowden puts it, “… the focus is sharpened to residential housing and series that document how we have built, occupied, owned, and financed this most enduring symbol of the American Dream” (p. 4-395). I especially appreciated Snowden's guide to the evolving American mortgage market.

Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman edited the subsequent chapter on manufacturing. The rise and fall of American manufacturing (as a share of employment or GDP) are a central theme in the story of American economic development. Atack and Bateman succinctly describe the fundamental changes in manufacturing activity in their introduction—from artisan shops to factories, from water power to steam and electrical power, and the emergence of “mass production for the Amass market” (p. 4-575). In the tables that follow, the drama of American manufacturing unfolds in numerical form—establishments, outputs, inputs, corporate form, and profits—often disaggregated to the industry level.

Chapter De focuses on “Distribution” and presents statistics on wholesale and retail trade, plus some information on advertising. Daniel Raff provides a brief, engaging guide to the history of selling stuff in the United States, from general stores to Wal-Mart. Louis Cain effectively uses maps, graphs, and a timeline to introduce the chapter on transportation (Df). The introduction highlights the ongoing interaction of private and public interests (and funds) in planning and building the American transportation network. This is a lengthy chapter with nearly 200 pages of data series that begin with a table describing farmers' trips to market in rural Massachusetts in the late 1700s and end with oil and gas pipeline mileage up to the late 1900s. In between, the story of the nation's economic integration plays out a fundamental level, as the modes of transporting people and goods across great space improve and facilitate ever increasing volumes of movement, at higher speed, at lower costs, and with more safety and reliability.

Volume 5: Governance and International Relations

The final volume starts with four chapters on government-related activities: government employment and finances (chapter Ea), elections and politics (chapter Eb), crime and law enforcement (chapter Ec), and national defense (chapter Ed). It continues with chapters on international trade (chapter Ee), and finally, the statistical records for outlying areas (chapter Ef), the colonial era (chapter Eg), and for the short-lived Confederate States of America. Volume 5 concludes with appendices on weights and measures (appendix 1), states and census regions (appendix 2), and the origins and history of Historical Statistics (appendix 3).

John Wallis edited the chapter on “Government Finance and Employment.” His delineation of eras in which different layers of government predominated (state governments to 1842, local governments to the 1930s, and the federal government ever since) provides a helpful organizational framework for thinking about American fiscal history. Wallis also highlights the difficulties of measuring the extent of overall government activity prior to the twentieth century, and consequently many of the data series (in particular, those requiring information for nonfederal activities) start in 1902. The federal series on debt, expenditure, and revenue, however, run back to 1789.

Historical Statistics focuses primarily on economic and demographic data, but John McIver's chapter on “Elections and Politics” adds perspective on American political history. The introductory essay views American democracy as an evolving phenomenon and provides a chronology of major political events in U.S. history. The data series include voter turnout, presidential elections, and the volume of congressional legislative activity. This, of course, scratches the surface of the quantitative record of American politics. One might imagine that a major, and perhaps overwhelming, area for potential expansion of Historical Statistics would be in the direction of political activity. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal's massive dataset documenting the history of Congressional voting comes to mind.

Douglas Eckberg, with Sutch as associate editor, discusses and organizes national data series on crime, law enforcement, and justice in chapter Ec. The essay provides a helpful guide to the history and shortcomings of a variety of data sources on crime, and it is best summed up by Eckberg as follows: “Criminal statistics remain difficult and unreliable, but not completely so” (p. 5-218). In addition to the standard crime series one would expect from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the chapter includes information on lynchings, on self-reported victimization rates, on suicides and homicides, and on incarceration and executions. It is a thoroughly depressing but important collection of information.

Scott Sigmund Gartner, with associate editor Hugh Rockoff, edited the chapter on “National Defense, Wars, Armed Forces, and Veterans.” The essay and data have two major components: first, information on the military, its resources (human and otherwise), and its engagements; and second, information on veterans. There are some extraordinary series here, including a table documenting hostile engagements with American Indians between 1866 and 1891, and a longer table of major battles dating to the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, whereas the lists are helpful in terms of dating and sequencing events, they provide little or no information on the outcome or historical significance of the engagements. That said, I realize it may be impossible to sum up any event's significance in a phrase or two (e.g., how does one accurately convey the significance of “July 4, 1863, Vicksburg” or “July 3, 1863, Gettysburg”?).

Michael Edelstein, Douglas Irwin, and Lawrence Officer organized the chapter (Ee) on American international economic relations, including detailed information on the balance of payments, international trade in goods and services, and exchange rates. I would have welcomed a concise chronology of major events in U.S. economic policy with respect to the international economy, though many of the major turning points are identified in the chapter's informative introductory essay.

Chapter Ef, edited by Sumner La Croix, pulls together data on “outlying areas” of the United States—12 areas that are controlled by the U.S. but that are not part of the contiguous 48 states and are not states (although Alaska and Hawaii are included here). La Croix had the difficult task of assembling and evaluating data from a wide variety of fragmentary sources. He has succeeded admirably in producing series for population, education, output, trade, prices, and territorial government receipts and expenditures.

John McCusker's introductory essay to chapter Eg, “The Colonial Economy,” captures the spirit of the Millennial Edition—“This chapter tells a story in numbers”—and provides an engaging characterization of economic progress in the colonial era. It could easily serve as a reading assignment for standard courses on American economic history. Its copious footnotes and lengthy list of references firmly anchor the essay's historical narrative. As in the previous chapter, the data range broadly: population, output, prices, money, taxes, and trade.

The final main chapter of the Millennial Edition, edited by Roger Ransom, reports on the brief existence of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865). The chapter's “chronology of events” is a helpful summary of the Civil War. The data series include information on population and output before and after the war as well as information on money, commodity prices and bond prices during the war itself.

Conclusions and Applause

The Millennial Edition is a major collective and cooperative achievement for the economists, historians, statisticians, and archivists who have contributed directly to the new volumes or to the preceding editions of Historical Statistics. The scope of the enterprise—across scholars, organizations, and generations—is conveyed in the preface, acknowledgments, and lists of contributors and consultants at the beginning of the first volume and in Carmel Ullman Chiswick's appendix to the fifth volume. Thus, the Millennial Edition begins and ends by acknowledging its historical roots, a fitting and virtuous circle for volumes that are the product of so much scholarship and that will be the cornerstone for so much more. Every library should invest in these volumes.

It is rare to see a project that is both massive and ambitious come off so well. A standing ovation is due and, of course, the big round of applause goes to the principal architects and editors: Richard Sutch and Susan Carter (general editors). The next round is for the editors in chief: Susan Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael Haines, Alan Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright; for managing editors Robert Barde, Matthew Sobek, and Monty Hindman; and for consulting editors Anthony Angiletta and Frank Smith. They deserve congratulations on a job well done and our gratitude for having done it.