Has the geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States changed over time? Constructing a large historical linked sample, I show that upward mobility in the early twentieth century was greater for those who grew up in the coastal and industrial regions, in contrast to more recent times, where mobility is higher among persons who were raised in the middle of the country. The historical patterns are not driven by imperfections in record linkage or measurement error in economic status.

How widespread are social network effects? To answer this, I introduce a page-based approach for identifying individuals living in close proximity and compare how the propensity to work in the same industry varies among worker pairs residing in the same versus different areas. Across the 70 largest cities in the early twentieth-century United States, those from the same area are more likely to work in the same industry. On average, the increase in propensity is around 14%–20% of the baseline mean. These effects also tend to be stronger among single women and migrants from the same country of origin.

Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the 20th century, when immigrants made up one-third of the population in crowded American cities, contemporaries blamed high urban mortality rates on the newest arrivals. We evaluate how the implementation of country-specific immigration quotas in the 1920s affected urban health. Cities with larger quota-induced reductions in immigration experienced a persistent decline in mortality rates, driven by a reduction in deaths from infectious diseases. The unfavourable living conditions immigrants endured explains the majority of the effect as quotas reduced residential crowding and mortality declines were largest in cities where immigrants resided in more crowded conditions and where public health resources were stretched thinnest.