U.S. Mothers' Pension Records: 1911-1930

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Shari Eli; Anna Aizer, Brown University; Joseph Ferrie, Northwestern University; Adriana Lleras-Muney, University of California-Los Angeles

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Appendix application/pdf 167.6 KB 08/12/2016 11:38:AM
MP_1940 application/x-stata 578.8 KB 04/26/2016 08:32:PM
MP_Ohio application/x-stata 1.3 MB 04/26/2016 08:32:PM
MP_WII application/x-stata 773 KB 04/26/2016 08:33:PM
MP_controls application/x-stata 1.2 MB 04/26/2016 08:33:PM
MP_data application/x-stata 7.5 MB 04/26/2016 08:33:PM
MultiMatch_x text/plain 4.4 KB 08/12/2016 11:42:AM
MultiMatch_x text/x-stata-syntax 4.4 KB 08/12/2016 11:42:AM
Readme application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 13.4 KB 08/12/2016 11:38:AM
iowafortable1b application/x-stata 33.8 KB 08/12/2016 11:43:AM

Project Citation: 

Eli, S., Aizer, A., Ferrie, J., & Lleras-Muney, A. (2016). U.S. Mothers’ Pension Records:  1911-1930 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. https://doi.org/10.3886/E71753V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary The Mothers' Pension Program was a needs-based program, established on a state-by-state basis between 1911 and 1931. The first state to pass the program was Illinois in 1911, and by 1931, all but four states had passed a program to aid mothers with dependent children. Mothers in need of pensions applied for them at the county-level. At present, 80,000 individual case files have been collected. For some states, the full universe of counties that provided MP benefits have been collected if found, while for others only a subset of counties have been found—but if a county has records, the universe of records has been collected by the researchers of the Mothers' Pension Project. For an historical account of the Mothers' Pension program in each state, see the Mothers' Pension Project Website here: http://individual.utoronto.ca/shari_eli/datamp.html. Records have been collected for the following 14 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. In some states, all or nearly all records are no longer extant due to short retention schedules set by states or privacy restrictions.

The records contained in this extract pertain to those used in the folllowing article: A. Aizer, S. Eli, J. Ferrie, A. Lleras-Muney (2015). "The Long-Run Impact of Cash Transfers to Poor Families." American Economic Review, April 2016.

Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources National Institutes of Health (R01 HD077227-01A1)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms demography; welfare legislation; poverty; economic history; health behavior; education; inequality; child welfare
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage US
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1/1/1911 – 1/1/1935


Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2016-08-15]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.