Matt Nelson

Our student Yue (Bruce) Yu has been working on an improved pipeline for nominative record linkage in Chinese historical datasets that uses machine learning. This working paper describes the approach and compares it with our existing, somewhat ad hoc approach for the 缙绅录.

osf.io/preprints/so...

How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling America’s Cancer-Research System

It’s horrific and inexplicable. Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are objectively pro-cancer. They’re destroying the entire infrastructure that has made so much progress and is poised to make much more. People will suffer and die because of them. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/m...

Remote policies helped women work. In-office mandates and child care costs are driving them back out. Low flexibility and high child care costs are pushing mothers with young kids to the sidelines after they joined the workforce in record numbers during the pandemic. Emma Nelson The Minnesota Star Tribune September 13th at 6:01 AM CDT

"The labor participation rate for women with children younger than 5 had the biggest midyear drop in more than 40 years during the first six months of 2025."

#ESHD2025 AWARDS!!!!!

The Tamara Hareven Award has been established by the ESHD to recognize the best PhD thesis.

Björn Quanjer @Radboud_Uni

"A Tale Of Tallness. A household perspective on early life determinants of male height within the Netherlands between 1850 and 1950"

#ESHD2025 AWARDS!

The Roger Schofield Award has been established to recognize the best paper presented by a young demographer at the ESHD Conference

Emma Diduch
Work,Marriage & Motherhood In Derbyshire:Event History Analysis Of Women's Employment & Fertility Histories,1881-1911

#ESHD2025 Awards!

The Louis Henry Award has been established by the EDHD to recognize methodological innovations in data collection,visualization or analysis

Mosaic Database by Szoltysek,Ogórek, Gruber & Poniat
Social Science History @CambridgeCore 2025 doi:10.1017/ssh.2024.18

Opinion | We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health

Nine former heads of the CDC—appointed by presidents of both parties—warn the nation of the immense peril RFK Jr is putting the country in.

Gift link, please send to families and friends www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

You know you did the Great Minnesota Get-Together (the State Fair for the non-Minnesotans) right when you’re still full 8 hours later and are drinking a ton of water because how pickled one is from all the salt, fats, and alcohol consumed.

State sanctioned gluttony at its finest.

Racial Residential Segregation in the United States (September 2025) - Residential segregation is a central factor in explaining socioeconomic gaps across race and ethnicity in the United States. Place of residence directly impacts access to schools, j...

Very happy to see my review with John Parman “Racial Residential Segregation in the United States” is finally out in Journal of Economic Literature! Thanks to everyone who provided feedback as we worked on this over the years!! @aeajournals.bsky.social www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

ChatGPT tends to ignore retractions on scientific papers Study finds the chatbot doesn’t acknowledge concerns with problematic studies

“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues.

In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”

Join us Sept 17 for a timely webinar on Birthright Citizenship and learn from the experts @unlawfulentries.bsky.social @skantrow.bsky.social @cnacken1.bsky.social William Jones and Cecilia Marquez. Register z.umn.edu/BirthrightCitizen

@umn-amst.bsky.social @umnlawschool.bsky.social

New post, on why a 1% hallucination risk is terrible if you’re using large language models to look for unusual events: kucharski.substack.com/p/small-hall...

U of M Morris grapples with lowest enrollment in years, raising worries for its future The campus in west-central Minnesota has faced declining enrollment for years. Now Morris faces a critical point.

The University of Minnesota, Morris provides an amazing liberal arts experience and learning environment that equals or exceeds MN's private liberal arts colleges at a 1/3 or 1/4 of the price.

Stop prioritizing 70k/yr institutions. Check out places like Morris! www.startribune.com/university-o...

New data sources for research on the nineteenth-century United States: IPUMS full count datasets of the censuses of population 1850–1880 IPUMS has finalized databases for each of the United States population censuses from 1850 to 1880. These data are the result of collaborations between FamilySearch and Ancestry.com, which provided ...

The historical U.S. census just does not get old. What a treat to work with these census and IPUMS data enthusiasts. @mattanelson.bsky.social, @j-david-hacker.bsky.social, Matthew Sobek, Lap Huynh, @evanrobertsnz.bsky.social, @stevenruggles.bsky.social, @ipums.bsky.social

Conference | Social Science History Association The conference involves over a thousand scholars from around the world, although graduate students and faculty from the leading American universities predominate.

The 2025 SSHA Conference in Chicago is just around the corner! Regular registration rates expire at the end of September. Find out more and read the most up to date version of the program here: ssha.org/conference/

Auditorium with speaker and audience for the conference

Off to a great start here at the Data-Intensive Research Conference! @umnlifecourse.bsky.social

🎉🎉 Nos professeures Simona Bignami (PI) et @lisaydillon.bsky.social obtiennent une subvention CRSH-Savoir pour « Settling the Canadian West: Evolving household and family structures across ethnic groups between 1901 and 1911 » avec @kris-inwood.bsky.social, en collaboration avec D. Ghio et J. Jedwab

We'll have some less smoky summers, but get used to smokier MN summer trend until we reduce GHG emissions.
Canada has 1.2 BILLION ACRES of boreal forests.
Hotter drier climate sucks more moisture from dry fuels.
Unfortunately this is the tip of the iceberg for smoke potential.

You can “other” them into categories of “exclusion” –e.g. proposals to fiddle the constitutional basis of apportionment. Add a “citizenship” question to the 2030 census. “Exclude” “non citizens” from House apportionment calculations. One version of that. www.congress.gov/bill/118th-c...

📣 We are seeking to fill multiple postdoctoral positions! We have funding to fill NIH T32 program-based positions. Positions start Fall 2025, but timing is flexible! We'll begin reviewing applications July 21st, 2025 - so don't wait! Apply now! pop.umn.edu/training/pos...

MPIDR - Publications The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock is one of the leading demographic research centers in the world. At the MPIDR, researchers from all over the world investigate demo...

I'm happy to share that the 2nd paper of my PhD "Assessing the validity of microsimulated kinship networks using Swedish population registers", with @demography.bsky.social, @martinkolk.bsky.social and @ezagheni.bsky.social, is available as an MPIDR Working Paper share.google/g0nVmiSI6huB...

I think a bunch of incurious people who have suddenly developed strong feelings on race and ethnicity measurement should probably take a beat, grapple with the literature on *within person* racial and ethnic fluidity in linked data and then maybe take a pass on takes for a little bit

Identifying matrilineal kin networks in the United States 1900–1940 National-level analysis of historical women’s life courses and kinship networks is understudied due to data limitations. Previous analysis of patrilineal kin propinquity in the United States relied...

4/4
This work is the a first step towards identifying full kinship networks in the United States prior to 1950. I’m presenting on the next steps of this research at the World Economic History Congress in Lund at the end of July!

3/4
Each linked dataset uses different sources and approaches for record linkage.

Consider source material used for linking, methodological biases, accuracy, and representativity to determine which linked dataset is appropriate for your specific research question.

2/4
Married women experienced life cycle of kin beyond the household. Younger married women lived closest to siblings (own or husband) & husband’s parents. By age 60, shifts to living near children and their own siblings. Kin propinquity rate ⬆️ ~60% when accounting for both familial lineages.

Identifying matrilineal kin networks in the United States 1900–1940 National-level analysis of historical women’s life courses and kinship networks is understudied due to data limitations. Previous analysis of patrilineal kin propinquity in the United States relied...

1/4
My paper identifying kinship networks beyond the household for married women in the US 1900-1940 is now out!

I identify not just the husband’s potential kin, but also the wife’s pot. kin, & use all years of linked census data to identify kin, not just a pair of years.

Front cover of the book Human Evolutionary Demography

Our (with Oskar Burger and Ron Lee) edited volume Human Evolutionary Demography is now published by Open Book Publishers 🎉 32 chapters completely free to read, including an impressive line-up of researchers working in this area 😊

New @iussp.bsky.social panel on Kinship Structures, Dynamics and Inequalities, aims to "bring together researchers from demography, sociology, public health, and related fields to advance the comparative study of kinship"

iussp.org/en/kinship-s...

Opinion: It’s time to reevaluate Minnesota’s free school lunch program "By applying free access universally, we enable lazy school district policies that treat nutrition like a checkbox, not a commitment. If the program is universal for its simplicity, it also becomes si...

I don't know the quality of the meals Minnesota is serving--if they're bad, we should improve them

But I do want to note that serving fruit and vegetables to kids that they choose not to eat is not true food waste. Part of how you get kids to eat produce is serving it over and over, with patience

Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era Benton Wishart & Trevon D. Logan X LinkedIn Facebook Bluesky Threads Email Link Working Paper 32529 DOI 10.3386/w32529 Issue Date May 2024 The traditional historical narrative claims that White women were rarely involved in market transactions for enslaved people in the antebellum United States. Using transaction records, notary statements, and runaway advertisements, we provide the first quantitative estimates of the extent of White women’s involvement in antebellum slave transactions as owners of record. Contrary to the narrative, we find that White women were quite frequently noted as owners of record in transactions as both buyers and sellers. White women participated in more than 30% of the transactions in the largest market for enslaved people in the antebellum era. We also find that White women were especially likely to be owners involved in transactions with enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions. Linking transaction participants to the census, we find that White women owners were not more likely to be widows nor were they older than women in the general population. Overall, our results are consistent with the new historical narrative that White women were ubiquitous in enslavement transactions and this was a critical part of White women’s economic activity in the antebellum era.

Happy #Juneteenth! Did you know white women enslaved Black people too cc @trevondlogan.bsky.social?

White women participated in 30% of transactions in the largest market for enslaved people AND were listed as owners in 40% of transactions of enslaved women. 🙃 #blacksky

www.nber.org/papers/w32529