iTunes installer version 8.01.11
LOCAL 12 TECH MEETING -Present were Charles Bose, Mike Allen, Dino Drudi, Bill Salvatore, and Peter Meyer.
Enterprise wireless topic. Especially in conference training rooms (“phase 1”).
Especially for vendors, or visitors from (say) the Census Bureau.
Long standing policy is that they can’t use their own computers. With BLS computers
only. Even from sister agencies. BLS has been strict about the definition.
Gateways / firewalls will protect this traffic from the secure traffic in the bureau.
The visitor’s computer will have to be configured in some way in advance. Should have
no access to the LAN. People walking through should not have access through the new
facility to the internet or anything else.
Newly issued BLS laptops all have wireless.
Dial-up by RAS still exists but is in practice extremely slow.
Conference center will be able to arrange this.
We discussed possible phases 2 and 3 which would make the new capability available
elsewhere in the national office building and in the regional offices.
Since two years ago blsers are all permitted to connect by VPN. At the sametime,
wireless calls got started. “offices” pay for that.
-- End of local 12 meeting
In the Baur HSE paper I need to explicitly define:
 occupation – held by any employed person, and others who choose to report one.
 Labor force
 Work force = the employed
Evan Roberts dissertation: “No . . . ?”
* “Variation in census enumeration makes it difficult to obtain consistent estimates of
labor force participation rates. It is likely that labor force participation rates declined
slowly after 1850, reaching a [low] between 1900 and 1920, [then] rising to
approximately their [1850?] level by 1940.” (p.4)
* Using IPUMS LABFORCE variable on the Censuses, he estimates the % of wives
between 16 and 64 who worked regularly for pay outside the home (“had a gainful
occupation”), and gets: 4% in 1860, 4.13% in 1900, 14% in 1940, and 50%ish in 1980,
and more than 60% in 2000. (p.1)
* Wives were more likely to work outside the home in 1800-1830 than in 1870-1900.
(p2) (Goldin and Sokoloff, JEH, 1982). GET THIS.
* In the early stages of industrialization (p3) married women’s work outside the home
declines. After a long period of this, married women’s labor participation rate goes up
again as there are opportunities to work in manufacturing and services. Fertility declines,
which occurs in the writer’s view because the woman’s wages are valuable relative to the
value of additional children. (p3)
* The history of women’s employment overlaps with the history of women’s labor
participation but we do not have direct estimates of who considered working or tried to
work apart from those who did work. (p5) NOTE THAT IN MY WHO’S-LEFT-OUT
PAPER I’LL MAYBE WANT TO ESTIMATE THIS NUMBER.
* Chapter 1 will “give an overview of changes in the level of married women’s labor
participation between 1860 and 1940” using the Census samples. It shows a convergence
between the behavior of black and of white women. Black women were more likely to
work in the earlier period. (p5)
* “I use the new complete-count dataset of the 1880 census . . .” It has “a complete
transcription of responses to census inquiries about occupation.” There has been a
controversy about the counting/recording fo women’s occupations – see Carter and
Sutch, Historical Methods, 1996. This text will examine married women’s participation
and occupations for smaller ethnic groups. (pp5-6)
* Ch 2 will examine whether “married women’s property laws” affected whether women
worked. Finds that in the short run, no, but they seem associated to a rise in girls going to
school, and a rise in the long run – 1920s. (pp 6-7)
* Ch 3 works out what predicts a woman’s labor force participation decisions. Finds that
in 1890, married women’s decision on this were evidently affected by whether their
husbands income and employment but that by 1940 they were not. (p7) Chs 4 and 5
examine public opinion toward married women’s work. Finds that the early opposition
was broad but shallow; not fierce. And became muted by personal acquaintance with
wives who worked. (pp7-8)
* In this period new norms of family life became established which made it feasible for
more women to work, later. (pp10-11)
* In late 1800s, only 10% of U.S. female workers were married. By 1940 it was 20%.
There was concern about white mothers working in factory jobs. (p12)
* Graph p. 13 shows massive increase from 1920 to 1980 in working wives. Massive.
* Sobek’s 1997 dissertation is called “children’s and mothers’ wage labor in thee eastern
U.S. cities 1880-1920.” (p15)
* Censuses before 1940 did not record amounts of income from work. He’ll make do
with cost of living surveys and the 1940 census. (p16) After 72 years, microfilm copies
of the schedules from censuses up to 1940 re made available for researchers.
* Cites Anderson 1988 and (FOR ME TO SEE) Gauthier and Census Bureau _Measuring
America: decennial censuses from 1790 to 2000. and Magnuson and King, Enumeration
procedures in Historical Methods, and Diana Lynn Magnuson’s 1995 dissertation at
Minnesota. (p16)
* The Const refers to slaves obliquely as “all other Persons”. (p17) electoral districts
were to be divided by total population, not voters.”
* “In 1880 the Census added questions on the relationship of individuals to the household
heat, marital status, and parental birthplaces.” (p18)
* In 1910 the Census spli the occupation inquiry into occupation, industry (where they
did their work, or what was produced) and class of worker (relationship to the owner of
the business).
* Cites Steven Ruggles, Comparability of the public use files of the US census of pop
1880-1980” Social Science History 1999 123-124. OOH! See this (p19)
Also Ruggles, “IPUMS redesign” Historical Methods 2003. (p12)
* The 1960 Census was the first to release an electronic public use sample. (p19)
It was the first to store data on tape not punch cards. It was a small sample but it was
used for research immediately.
* Researchers have created representative samples of at least 1% of the population for all
of the individual-level population censes (except the 1890 census for which the
manuscripts were destroyed in a fire).” (p20)
* All the samples before 1960 in the IPUMS are 1% samples of the population. Five
percent samples of the 1900 and 1930 censuses will be available by 2010. (p21)
The experience and behavior of black and white wives was sufficiently different that I
will analyze them separately in this thesis. Where the data exist to describe American
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese wives, it seems that their experience was not like that of
white wives. (p21) But Hispanic women’s labor force participation rates were similar to
white women’s and so they are not distinguished from white women in the analyses that
follow. (p22)
In the late 19th century and early 20th century one in ten native American women reported
they were gainfully employed. That’s more than the (measured?) workforce
participation of white women but less than those of black women. (p22)
Of the 1175 Native American women (measured as) working at the time of the 1880
census, 25% were recorded as working as laborers, 20% as weavers, 17% as laundresses
in private households, 12% as farm laborers, and 9% as domestic servants. Measured
employment of Native Americans from 1880 till 1940 stayed about the same. White
women’s measured participation increased substantially in that same time. (p22)
For 1880 we have a complete population database. (p21-22) The 1880 census had over
50 million people including nearly 9 million married women. (p24) “The records
from the 1880 census are available in the same format as the IPUMS sample, but
with somewhat more detail about occupations. (Ron Goeken, “The 1880 U.S.
Population Database.” Historical Methods 2003, 36:2. SEE THIS.) (p24)
The U.S. Census counts people at their permanent abode. (Roberts calls this a de jure
enumeration.) If a husband was working out of town on the census date, he was still
supposed to be counted at home, based on information supplied by other members of the
household. When a person is listed as “married, spouse absent” – that is, not living with
the spouse – we infer that the couple is probably separated permanently. And the “spouse
absent” wives were much more likely to be employed than wives living with their
spouses. Roberts will leave the “spouse absent” married women out of the analyses that
follow. In 1880 25% of white wives with spouse absent worked, and in 1940 40% of
such wives worked. Of wives living with husbands, 2% were recording as working in
1880 and 12% in 1940. (p25)
“Until 1950, the census information was collected by enumerators who visited
households and recorded the information about each individual on a separate line. The
census taker met at least one individual from the household who provided information
about the entire household.” (p26) This approach incorporated the significant minority
illiterate in written English. One source of error was that the census taker had to record
spoken information. Uncommon names and spellings were more likely to be recorded
inaccurately. (A footnote highlights that the British censuses were conducted by
enumerators leaving paper forms to be filled out by the household which the enumerator
would then compile onto larger sheets of paper, similar to the US census. These were
then sent to the central statistical office.)
Another source of error was that the person reporting to the enumerator might not know
exact information about the other residents of the household. Roberts writes that neither
of these sources of error should much affect the counting of whether married women
were working. (p26)
A footnote says that in 1940 the census tracked who in the household answered the
questions. It was more often a wife than a husband. (p26)
The census has included explicit information on the relatiojnship between each household
member and the household head since 1880. From 1850 through 1870 the census takers
follow standard procedures, listing the hh head, spouse, children, other relatives, then
unrelated people in that order. So IPUMS has inferred relationships with confidence.
(p26-27) this study will benefit too that the married couple usually has the same last
name.
Having now dealt with the enumeration of family in this historical censuses, Roberts now
turns to the enumeration of work. (p28)
Since 1940 respondents over 16 years old re defined as participating in the labor force if
during a reference week – typically the week preceding the survey – the person did one of
the following activities (p29):
(1) operated a business
(2) worked for pay for someone else for at least one hour
(3) worked unpaid in a family business for at least 15 hours
(4) actively looked for work
By default people who did none of those are reported as being out of the labor force.
(p29)
Before 1940 a “gainful worker” concept distinguished employed from not-employed.
Instructions to enumerators varied over the years. (p29)
The modern definition of labor force participation was constructed during the Great
Depression. The US definition by design similar to that used in other industrial countries.
See for example Clarence Long’s The Labor Force under changing income and
employment. 1958 pp42-48. yes, do!
See Philip m. Hauser, “The labor force and gainful workers – concept,
measurement, and comparability” AJS 54:4 1949. pp338-355.!!
There is scholarly consensus that the gainful worker enumeration understated the
labor force participation of married women by 5 to 10 percent from 1880 through
1940. (pp29-30)
Table 1.1 now has enumerator instructions, all from ipums site.
1930 instructions: http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1930.shtml.
Quoting them : “a ‘gainful occupation’ in census usage is an occupation by which the
person who pursues it earns money or a money equivalent, or in which he assists in the
production of marketable goods. The term ‘gainful worker,’ as interpreted for census
purposes does not include women doing housework in their own homes, without wages,
and having no other employment (see par. 194), nor children working at home, merely on
general household work, on chores, or at odd time on other work.”
“. . . for a person who works only a small part of the time at the occupation . . . the rule
should generally be followed that unless the person spends at least the equivalent of one
day per week at the occupation, he or she should not be returned as a gainful worker.”
The entry in column 25 should then be NONE. (p30)
[[gainful worker]]
For 1920 instructions, those paragraphs are included and there’s another one too, which
says that if a person has two occupations, the enumerator should write down the one at
which the person gets more money; if this cannot be learned, record the one at which the
person spends more time. (p31)
(I think that’s all standard in all censuses where occ is collected.)
1910: doesn’t have those paragraphs. It says instead:
An entry should be made in this column for every person enumerator. The occupation, if
any, followed by a child of any age or a woman is just asimportant for census purposes as
the occupation followed by a man. It must neverbe taken for granted, without inquiy, that
a woman or child has no occupation. (p31)
In the case of a woman doing housework in her own home without salary or wages and
no other employment the entry in column 18 should be ‘none’. But a woman working at
housework for wages should be ‘returned’ in column 18 as ‘housekeeper’, ‘servant’,
‘cook’, or ‘chambermaid’ as the case may be, and the entry in column 19 should state the
kind of place she works, as ‘private family’, ‘hotel’, or ‘boarding house’. Or if a woman
in addition to doing housework in her own home regularly earns money by some other
occupation, whether pursued in her own home or outside, that occupation should be
reported in columns 18 and 19. A woman who regularly takes in washing shouldbe
reported as a laundress or washerwoman, and column 19 should say ‘at home’. (p31)
For a woman who works only occasionally or for a short time each day at outdoor farm
or garden work, or in a dairy, or caring for live stock or poultry, the occupation should be
‘none’ but for a woman who works regularly and most of the time at such work the retrn
should be “farm laborer – home farm”, “farm laborer – working out”, “laborer – garden”,
“laborer – dairy farm”, “laborer – stock farm”, or “laborer – poultry yard”. A woman
who herself runs a farm or plantation should be reported as a farmer and not as a farm
laborer. (p31)
Keeping boarders or lodgers should be reported as an occupation if the person engaged in
it relies upon it for hs or her principal means of support. In that case the occupation
should be “keeper – boardinghouse” or “keeper – lodging house”. If instead a family
keeps a few boarders or roomers to supplement or eke . . . .