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Matt Nelson

@mattanelson.bsky.social
1K followers 150 following 53 posts

ISRDI Senior Research Scientist | IPUMS Full Count Census Data 1790-1950 | Kinship Networks | 10 gallon 🩸 donor

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Reposted by Matt Nelson
Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 14h
Very happy to announce that my article with Benton Wishart “Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era” has been published in the latest issue of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity! journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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IPUMS @ipums.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A huge congratulations to Ellora Derenoncourt on being named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow! We've been following her impressive work for years. A very well deserved honor. bit.ly/4dx5kGX
macfound.org
Ellora Derenoncourt
Uncovering the roots and ongoing drivers of racial disparities in wealth and income mobility in the United States.
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Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I was also pretty stunned by the wording of this NBER abstract 🫠. As @rcobooth.bsky.social lays out very nicely, there are many important questions to be explored here, but language, especially around reproductive choices, matters. substack.com/home/post/p-... #econsky #demography
substack.com
On prospective grandparents
(a tiresome thing from the internet this weekend, and some new stories)
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Alice Reid @amrcampop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interested in a PhD in historical demography/population studies at @camunicampop.bsky.social, @camunigeography.bsky.social, Cambridge University? We have 3 suggested topics (see thread): contact me to discuss, or to suggest your own idea. Apply by early December for funded places.
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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Yet another example of how AI can be useful *once you already have deep knowledge and experience in a field* whereas using it as a student actively prevents the acquisition of that knowledge. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | A.I. Has Made Me a Better Doctor. It’s Made Med Students Worse. (Gift Article)
I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — and less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts.
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Louis Henderson @hendersonlouis.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Happy to announce that “Valuing five centuries of unpaid breastfeeding in England”, with Jane Humphries, is published in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2600844123. Breastfeeding benefits both children and mothers, but its economic value often escapes notice because it is unpaid labour (1/8)
pnas.org
Valuing five centuries of unpaid breastfeeding in England | PNAS
Breastfeeding is vital and valuable labor, contributing to the physical and cognitive health of children throughout their lives, yet it is rarely c...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.
apnews.com
AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...
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Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) @mpidr.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
👓Recommended Reading: Comparison of Microsimulated and Register-based Kinship Data In their recent paper, Liliana P. Calderón-Bernal et al. examine the agreement between microsimulated and register-based kin counts. www.demogr.mpg.de/go/RRead Diego Alburez | Martin Kolk | Emilio Zagheni
Average number of different relatives in 2017 by year of birth, shown in two charts using data from SOCSIM and Swedish registries.
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Casey Breen @caseybreen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
We're hosting our 2nd annual CenSoc Users Conference on December 4th, remotely. Please consider joining us! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
CenSoc Users Conference 2026
2026 CenSoc Users Conference Hosted by the CenSoc Project Organizer: Casey Breen We invite submissions for our second annual CenSoc Users Conference. The conference will be held remotely on Decem...
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Period measures of fertility, like TFR, are less stable than cohort measures and are currently overstating fertility decline. New paper out on The Long-Term Trends in Cohort Fertility: Global, Regional and National Estimates and Projections for Cohorts Born in 1935–2055 doi.org/10.1111/padr...
Graph from paper comparing period and cohort measures of fertility since 1950 projected to 2100. Lines are similar until around 1990 when period drops below cohort measure and stays below cohort measure
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
It's often assumed kin networks break down with marketisation & urbanisation, but there's surprisingly little evidence on this. @anushe.bsky.social tested whether childcare was more often provided by kin in a less-market-integrated village compared with a more-market-integrated town in Tanzania 1/
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The most valuable thing about an unfinished manuscript is that it reminds you not every idea deserves to become a paper
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Erika McEntarfer @erikamcentarfer.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Amy O’Hara wrote up a longer piece on all of the red flags in the ‘Census’ report on noncitizen voting. mdi.georgetown.edu/response-to-...
mdi.georgetown.edu
Dissecting the “Beginning Analysis” of Noncitizen Voting - Massive Data Institute
Author: Amy O’Hara,  Director of the Massive Data Institute at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University Rigorous scientific research into voting in U.S. elections consistently finds ...
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Amanda Regan, Ph.D. @regan008.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Johns Hopkins + the AHA are hosting the AI and History Conference 2026 -- Oct 15-16 in Baltimore. Whatever your take on AI (excited, skeptical, curious, already using it), there's a place for you in this conversation. Learn more at: proflouishyman.github.io/ai_conferenc...
proflouishyman.github.io
AI and History Conference 2026
A practitioner-focused conference for historians using AI and computational methods, October 15–16, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University.
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Kasey Buckles @kaseybuckles.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
🔊The Census Tree team is hosting our first-ever conference in February of 2027! If you have a paper that uses the Census Tree, please consider submitting it for the program. More details and the call for papers available here:
populationanalytics.nd.edu
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B Jarosz @datageekb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Just gonna' leave this right here.
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Jon Collins @jcollins.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Legal documents released today show federal law enforcement officials extensively surveilled public meetings and activists during the ICE surge, and created dossiers on political enemies. I've been busy, but will post some takeaways on this thread soon: (1) www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...
mprnews.org
Attorney: Homeland Security spied on Minnesotans who spoke out against ICE
Defense attorney Kevin Riach alleges that just four days after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents, that Homeland Security Investigations launched Operation Puppet Master. The agency cou...
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Steven Ruggles @stevenruggles.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Curious about the invention of microdata? Our new paper in Demography reveals the story. doi.org/10.1215/0070...
Graph of involvement of PAA presidents with the Census Bureau, 1930-2019. Peak involvement was 1950-1969.
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Pamela Toler (she/her) @pdtoler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
One of the best parts of being a historian? Changing my mind. Sometimes one letter or one newspaper article sends me back to rethink everything I thought I knew. That's not failure. That's good history. 🗃️
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Evan Roberts @evanrobertsnz.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Want to make sure that my economic history friends and colleagues see this article about method and epistemology in economic history from the 1960s to 1980s. If you (too?) have read a lot of this literature and talked to some of the protagonists not much is new read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article...
read.dukeupress.edu
“Dehumanizing” Economic History: Cliometrics, from Boom to Bust, 1960s–1980s | History of Political Economy | Duke University Press
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Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New paper alert! Vital stats only capture individual births, not people’s reproductive career. For that, demographers use surveys that collect full fertility histories. But these fertility histories are less helpful if people don’t fully report all their births or report info inaccurately. 1/
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Eric Columbus @ericcolumbus.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
If you exclude one specific scene, Mrs. Lincoln actually enjoyed the Ford's Theatre production of "Our American Cousin"
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John Carter Brown Library @jcblibrary.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Call For Proposals: Conference on Families in Early American and Atlantic Worlds April 15-17, 2027 Hosted by the John Carter Brown Library (Co-chairs Julie Hardwick and Karin Wulf) Details at: forms.gle/QWcB23XGbwu6...
Conference poster for the Conference on Families in Early American and Atlantic Worlds featuring an image of birds and an image of a nest in a tree as well as the JCB logo and text.
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Liliana P. Calderón-Bernal @lpcalderonb.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
My second PhD paper is out! 🎉 'Assessing the Agreement Between Microsimulated and Register-Based Kin Counts in Sweden',with @demography.bsky.social , @martinkolk.bsky.social & @ezagheni.bsky.social @mpidr.bsky.social @suda-sthlm.bsky.social 🔗 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00324728.2026.2706778
tandfonline.com
Assessing the agreement between microsimulated and register-based kin counts in Sweden
Estimating kinship networks is a data-intensive undertaking, usually conducted using empirical sources or demographic models. Although empirical data, such as population registers, provide observed...
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
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Matt Nelson @mattanelson.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
How hot and humid is it in Minnesota? It’s GBBO Chocolate week.
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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Just published in Historical Methods: Chris Minns & coauthors link Ontario marriage to historical census records to show married women & men had similar rates of intergenerational mobility 1871-1901. Unexpectedly, the inclusion of more false positive links does not bias the mobility estimates. OA
tandfonline.com
Mobility and marriage: Preliminary findings from a new longitudinal dataset of Canadian women, 1871-1901
This article develops a methodology to create a longitudinal historical database of women by linking Ontario marriage records 1859-1938 to complete count Canadian census data between 1871 and 1921....
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Isak Kvam @isakkvam.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
My family‘s annual MN lake vacation is in its 33rd year, but the warm and smokeless summers from my childhood lake memories are not the same ones my nieces and nephews now have.
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Jim Clifford @jimclifford.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Reading the Archive by Machine: An OCR Benchmark for Historians, 1612–1921 Here is version 1 of a working paper on the new OCR tools that are transforming digital history. working-papers-in-critical-search.github.io/paper-004-oc...
working-papers-in-critical-search.github.io
Reading the Archive by Machine – Working Papers in Critical Search
A benchmark of six OCR systems (Tesseract, olmOCR 2, Chandra 2, Infinity Parser 2, GLM-OCR, and Gemini 3.5 Flash) on human-transcribed archival documents spanning 1612–1921: early-modern print, ninete...
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Sophie Li @sophieliecon.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Two years after the first submission, my job market paper "The effect of a woman-friendly occupation on employment: U.S. postmasters before WWII" is now published at Explorations in Economic History ☺️: doi.org/10.1016/j.ee... #econhist
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Julius Koschnick @juliuskoschnick.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
New working paper With Torben Johansen and @ChristianVedel It's on a methodological issue that we think is crucial for the discipline of economic history: Whenever we use machine learning tools in our workflow, they can introduce structural bias. So, what should we do?
ML tool performance can decline when applied to archaic text
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Ciara Breathnach @ciarab.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Delighted to see this OA output from @thegreatleap22116.bsky.social with @rachelmurphy.bsky.social Prof Tiziana Margaria and our talented PhDs Marco, Sami (Daniel) and Sebastian. Thanks to all hlcs.nl/article/view... @uccresearch.bsky.social @unioflimerick.bsky.social @researchireland.ie
hlcs.nl
Irish Cause-of-Death Data, 1864–1921 | Historical Life Course Studies
Historical Life Course Studies is the electronic journal of the European Historical Population Samples Network (EHPS-Net) and is published by the International Institute of Social History (IISH).
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Genealogy has always been government work. Where do you come from, who are your people, & what will that mean for your rights --and future? We're rightly focused on the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship, but those questions have driven policy for centuries. My book turns 1 today! Thanks...
Cover of Lineage with a collage of genealogical materials.  I really like the cover, fwiw!  It has one fraktur birth cerificate in gorgeous script and bright colors with text embeded in a heart that's wrapped onto the spine.First paragraph of the Introduction, "Genealogy as Statecraft."
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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Trudeau-Laurin, Bignami & coauthors provide the first portrait of living arrangements for Manitoba's Indigenous & Metis households in 1901, after three decades of massive population displacement. Extensive corrections to the census transcription permit a nuanced picture of household structures.
doi.org
Using the TCP data to study Indigenous households’ living arrangements at the turn of the 20th century: Challenges and opportunities
Although a vast body of literature identifies an indissoluble link between Indigenous families and their organization in households, the residential arrangements of Indigenous Peoples in Canada hav...
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NBER @nber.org · 29/06/2026
A new practitioner's guide to using LLMs in economic history covers the workflow, pitfalls, and validation, with four worked examples from paintings to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime speeches, from @andyferrara.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35374
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American Journal of Sociology @amjsoc.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
More kin, closer ties: Black young adults have 30–40% more emotionally close, frequently contacted, and nearby relatives than their white peers – a surplus rooted in horizontal kin (siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles).
journals.uchicago.edu
Kinship in Black and White Families: The Strength of Horizontal Ties | American Journal of Sociology: Vol 0, No ja
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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The 1901 Canadian census was the first to enumerate earnings for an entire employed population. Shari Eli, Nicholas Li & Janki Shah review the strengths & limits of these newly available data alongside other historical status indicators with particular attention to the social position of farmers.
doi.org
Measuring socioeconomic status in historical censuses of Canada
We use the new complete count Canadian Census records spanning from 1871 to 1901 to explore measures of socioeconomic status including income, occupation, and literacy, which scholars commonly use ...
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Kris Inwood @kris-inwood.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
The 1901 population census is the single most complete tally of Indigenous peoples in territory claimed by Canada. This new paper argues the census was a colonial construction limited by its presuppositions but still informative of the diversity of First Nations including a large number of Metis.
doi.org
Enumerating Indigenous populations at the turn of the twentieth century
In 1901, the Canadian government published a summary of the Indigenous population resident within the boundaries of what would become present-day Canada. Until now, the census microdata underlying ...
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IPUMS @ipums.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
New versions of the variables EDUC, HIGRADE, and INCTOT are available for the 1950 full count data on IPUMS USA. This update is the result of new data capture and represents a significant improvement in the accuracy of these measures. bit.ly/4xTlO4I
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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
A reminder on Father's Day that the history of the American Revolution is about more than Founding Fathers. IOW Dad Books can be about moms, daughters, sisters, aunts, wives, friends, and compatriots.
Book covers:  Abigail Adams by Woody Holton, Eliza Lucas Pinkney by Lorri Glover, Jefferson's Daughters by Catherine Kerrison, Ppaers of Martha Washington, The Odyseey of Phyllis Wheatley by David Waldstricher, Book of Ages by Jill Lepore, Angelica by Holly Beer,Hannah Sansom by Susan Klepp and Karin WulfBook covers Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon Reed, The Home Front by Lauren Duval, Never Caught by Ona Judge, Foudnbers as Fathers by Lorris Glover, First Family by Cassandra Good, Lineage by Karin Wulf
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Asjad Naqvi @asjadnaqvi.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
🚀 "ntwrk": A Stata package for network analysis 🚀 ⭐ Yesterday at the @statacorp.bsky.social Germany 2026 conference in Munich, I showcased the #ntwrk package: github.com/asjadnaqvi/s... The package is a designed for both network analysis and graph layouts. Check it out! Up soon SSC.
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Demographic Research @demresjournal.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
How reliable are web surveys for studying family structure & relationships? Comparing #KINMATRIX survey with demographic projections/surveys/registers for 10 Western countries reveals the potential & limits of nonprobability data in family demography. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
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MPR News @mprnews.org · 18/06/2026
Human Rights Watch has released a comprehensive report detailing human rights abuses by the government during this winter’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, which the group alleges also violates international human rights treaties that the U.S. is signed onto.
mprnews.org
Report authors say feds violated Minnesotans' human rights during ICE surge
The 186-page report from Human Rights Watch in part highlights how federal agents stopped or detained thousands of people and alleges that many of the arrests were arbitrary and race-based.
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Fabien Accominotti @faccominotti.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
UW-Madison Sociology is hiring! We're inviting applications for an assistant professor position in the fields of demography, soc of population, and health, to begin August 2027. Come join @uwsoc.bsky.social and the great @cdeuw.bsky.social! Apply here: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...
jobs.wisc.edu
Assistant Professor of Sociology - Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...
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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 16/06/2026
Been waiting for Census to OK our disclosure of new results on a project with the Longitudinal Business Database. RDC administrator just informed us, no disclosure because of new rule. This is gonna mess up a lot of ongoing research & especially job-market candidates. #EconSky
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Pat Hastings @ophastings.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
What’s happened to income-group gaps in parental spending on children in the U.S.? For the last 45 years, they just. keep. getting. wider. In a new @socarxiv.bsky.social working paper, I present updated evidence on trends in spending on childcare, education, and extracurricular activities.
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Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
White Americans who were eligible for the GI Bill, or had fathers who were, benefitted massively, while the equivalent Black Am benefitted much less on average bc they were funneled into using it on vocational schools (or scam “schools”) Paper estimates that accounts for *5 pp* in sons’ college gap
nber.org
Blindly Discriminating: The GI Bill and Racial Inequality
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
NEW: The Census Bureau has two new deputy directors — Michael Lachanski as deputy director for data, policy and science, and John Studds as deputy director for administration and operations www.census.gov/newsroom/pre...
census.gov
Census Bureau Announces Appointment of Two New Deputy Directors
Dr. Michael Lachanski and John Studds Named as Deputy Directors for the Census Bureau.
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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 02/06/2026
DHS's Operation Metro Surge hurt Minnesota's leisure and hospitality industry in Jan-Mar 2026, destroying: - 4,600 jobs, - 3.8 million work hours, - $71 million in wages. New analysis by me & @aaronrosenthal.bsky.social @northstarpolicy.org northstarpolicy.org/leisure-and-...
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Danielle Terrazas Williams @drdanielletw.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Job Opportunity! The Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is seeking outstanding candidates for an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) position in the history of U.S. political economy from the Civil War to the present. jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/profess...
jobs.wisc.edu
Professor of History - Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...
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