Riding to Opportunity: Geographic and Household Effects from the Orphan Trains

Scott Abrahams and Daniel Keniston

No 34282, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Between 1854 and 1929, approximately 200,000 children were transported from East Coast cities to new homes in the American West, motivated by the theory that a change of geography and household environment can transform lives. We leverage quasi-experimental variation in child placements to evaluate both whether being sent West improved outcomes relative to remaining in New York institutions, and whether variation in destination and foster household characteristics affected later life success. Linking tens of thousands of ``orphan train'' riders and comparable non-relocated children to Census records through 1940, we find no systematic evidence that relocation itself improved adult economic outcomes. Among children sent West, substantial variation in county-level economic opportunities also did not predict adult success. In contrast, the individual foster household income predicts children's later incomes, with an estimated intergenerational elasticity of about 0.2.

JEL-codes: J61 N31 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-inv and nep-lab
Note: DAE LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34282.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34282

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34282
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().