NATIVITY AND WEALTH IN MID-19TH-CENTURY CITIES

This article uses evidence from the manuscripts of the 1860 federal ce nsus to analyze the wealth of adult males in Boston, New York, Chicago , and Indianapolis. Previous multivariate analyses of wealth from the census have been flawed by reliance on ordinary least squares; we inst ead use quantile regression. Immigrants fared considerably better in t he Midwest than the East: immigrants in the midwestern cities held mor e wealth than their eastern counterparts, both absolutely and relative to the native-born in their respective cities. We explore the causes of these differences and their consequences for nineteenth-century Ame ricans and their communities.