Knowledge that Transforms

The authors discuss changes in U.S. morbidity and mortality in the early twentieth century with a focus on data from the Union Army recruit sample. sample consists of approximately 36000 men born between 1820 and 1843.... This paper examines the work of five scholars who have been among those principally involved over the past six years not only in the construction of the data set but in using the Union Army data to examine an interesting range of problems associated with aging. (EXCERPT)

Documenting and explaining economic events in the past is the central task of economic history. This activity needs no more justification than any other type of pure economic research. But economic history can also provide useful perspective when events in the past share commonalities with events in the present, thereby rendering current economic change less mysterious or forbidding. This paper describes a long-term research project aimed at documenting certain aspects of the economic history of labor in the United States before the Civil War. Although the labor history of the antebellum period seems remote from modern concerns, there are, perhaps surprisingly, numerous parallels-for example, changes in wage inequality, realwage stagnation, high rates of unskilled inimigration, the effects of labor-market conditions on welfare usage, wage rigidity and macroeconomic fluctuations, and convergence of geographically distinct labor markets.

There is little argument that early investment in computing and communications (CC guidance for future research policy can come from an examination of history. Whereas a vigorous industry has been visible for decades, many outside observers who question the need for federal C&C research support are often ignorant of the continuing exploitation by industry of science and technologies developed decades ago via past support and how such support has complemented industrial activities. This paper outlines how the organization of federal funding for C&C R&D has helped to make such funding so fertile, noting dimensions that may be of enduring value even as circumstances change. It focuses on the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative of the 1980's and early 1990's, which evolved from earlier funding programs and influences current programs and prospects.' By design (and reflecting space limitations), the paper emphasizes positive aspects that may be relevant for the future.

The Family Support Act of 1988 called for a scientific review of the official U.S. measure of poverty, reflecting a general dissatisfaction with the current measure, which has not been revised since the mid-1960's. A National Research Council (NRC) Panel of the National Academy of Sciences undertook that review and called for a new approach to poverty measurement.' The NRC Panel criticized the current Census Bureau methodology because the current measure of poverty has failed to reflect important economic trends or policies aimed to alleviate the condition it attempts to measure, economic poverty. This paper presents estimates of how the Panel's recommendations would alter the picture of the number and composition of the poor in the United States over the time period from 1979 to 1994, focusing on trends in poverty among children and the elderly. The current official series shows that the relative gap in poverty rates between children and the elderly has grown since 1979. We present evidence that the poverty gap between children and the elderly is narrowing, not widening, when the Panel's measure of family resources is employed.