Great Depression Youth Unemployment and Educational Attainment Replication Data

This replication package contains data and code for analyzing the impact of the Great Depression's youth unemployment on U.S. high school and post-secondary completion rates between 1910 and 1940. It includes linked census data and newly digitized city-level unemployment rates to examine gender and socioeconomic disparities. The analysis finds that youth unemployment significantly increased educational attainment for higher-income boys.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between city-level unemployment rates and high school graduation rates across different socioeconomic groups.
• Examine gender disparities in educational attainment using linked census data from the 1910-1940 period.
• Replicate econometric models assessing the effect of youth unemployment on post-secondary completion for higher-income boys.
• Investigate how household resources, as indicated by socioeconomic status in census data, mediated the impact of the Great Depression on education.

Strengths

• Data spans a 30-year period from 1910 to 1940, covering the transformative Great Depression era.
• Integrates multiple data sources, including linked census records and newly digitized city-level statistics.
• Specifically designed for replicating peer-reviewed research findings on a major historical economic event.

Limitations

• The specific dataset structure, including row count, column names, and file formats, is not described in the input.
• The geographic coverage is limited to the United States, with a focus on city-level analysis which may omit rural trends.
• As a replication package for a specific study, the data may be curated for those analyses and lack broader variables.

Provenance

Source

Pawel Janas, via ICPSR Harvested Dataverse.

Collection Method

Compiled from linked U.S. census data and newly digitized historical city-level unemployment rates.

Time Range

1910 to 1940.

Freshness

Last updated on February 23, 2026.

Geography

United States, with city-level granularity for unemployment data.