Migrating to Riches? Evidence from the California Gold Rush

Karen Clay and Randall Jones

The Journal of Economic History, 2008, vol. 68, issue 4, 997-1027

Abstract: Gold discoveries in 1848 set off a large and extremely rapid migration to California. This article uses newly collected data from the 1850 and 1852 Censuses of Population together with the public use sample of the 1850 Census of Population to examine who went to California and how they did economically. We find that the propensity to migrate was affected by the individual's age and literacy, distance of the state from California, and average state latitude. Consistent with the historical literature, we find that economic outcomes were generally small or even zero for miners but were positive and large for nonminers.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:jechis:v:68:y:2008:i:04:p:997-1027_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().