About

J. David Hacker is a demographic historian affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the position of Professor in the Department of History. His expertise lies in nineteenth and early twentieth century census data and the use of indirect methods to estimate long-term population trends and differentials. His research currently focuses on four main topics: the demographic cost and consequences of the American Civil War, the long-term decline of fertility between 1790 and 1940, the demographic behavior of immigrants in the early twentieth century, and the impact of racial residential segregation on child mortality. He is the principal investigator of an NIH-funded project aimed at constructing and disseminating complete-count linked datasets for the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses. Throughout his career, Hacker has contributed significantly to the understanding of historical demography, particularly in relation to American population history, civil war mortality, fertility decline, and the social and economic factors influencing demographic change.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Demography
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Geography
• Development economics
• History
• Economic history
• Law
• Psychology
• Biology

Selected publications

• New data sources for research on the nineteenth-century United States: IPUMS full count datasets of the censuses of population 1850–1880

  Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History · 2025-07-31 · 4 citations

  article

  IPUMS has finalized databases for each of the United States population censuses from 1850 to 1880. These data are the result of collaborations between FamilySearch and Ancestry.com, which provided the raw data, and IPUMS, which enhanced the data with editing, standardized coding, inter-census harmonization, and documentation. We discuss the data capture process conducted by the nineteenth-century United States Census Office, construction of the modern datasets, and variable availability. We conclude by briefly discussing the potential and limitations of these data for social science research. The public data are distributed by IPUMS and available for researchers to use free of charge.

  PublisherDOI

• The IPUMS multigenerational longitudinal panel: progress and prospects

  Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History · 2025-06-18 · 7 citations

  article

  The IPUMS Multigenerational Longitudinal Panel (MLP) is a longitudinal population panel that links American censuses, surveys, administrative sources, and vital records spanning the period from 1850 to the present. This article explains the rationale for IPUMS MLP, outlines the design of the infrastructure, and describes the linking methods used to construct the panel. We then detail our plans for expansion and improvement of MLP over the next five years, including the incorporation of additional data sources, the development of a "linkage hub" to connect MLP with other major record linkage efforts, and the refinement of our technology and dissemination efforts. We conclude by describing a few early examples of MLP-based research.

  PublisherDOI

• IPUMS full count datasets of enslaved persons and slaveholders in the United States in 1850 and 1860

  Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History · 2025-02-03 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article describes the development of IPUMS full count datasets of the censuses of enslaved inhabitants of the United States in 1850 and 1860 and their enslavers. These data are a result of two collaborations. The 1850 dataset stems from a collaboration between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose volunteers transcribed the original manuscript forms, and IPUMS, which enhanced the raw data with editing, standardized coding procedures, constructed variables, and documentation. The 1860 dataset was the result of a similar collaboration between the genealogical company Ancestry and IPUMS. The article discusses the features of these datasets, their limitations, and suggests possible research uses.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• IPUMS full count datasets of the United States censuses of mortality, 1850–1880

  Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History · 2025-01-11 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article describes four new IPUMS datasets constructed from the 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 Censuses of Mortality of the United States. We discuss the creation of the datasets, the variables included in each census year, and their potential for social science research. We highlight several limitations in the data and caution users about potential biases. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of the new data by analyzing the relationship between household wealth and child mortality in 1870. All four datasets and associated documentation are distributed for public use via the IPUMS website.

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• Bricks without straw: Using linked census data to estimate child mortality in the pre-registration era of the United States

  Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History · 2025-10-02

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We describe a method to estimate child mortality using linked IPUMS full-count census data for the decades following the 1850, 1860, 1870, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses. We compare the estimates to several external sources and conclude that the method represents a viable way to estimate and model child mortality at individual and aggregate levels over the course of the mortality transition. We demonstrate an example use of the method by mapping county-level mortality estimates for the 1910–1920 period. Finally, with the help of model life tables, we construct complete life tables by race and decade at seven levels of geography—urban/rural, city, county, state economic area, state, census division and nation—and make these data available for public use.

  PublisherDOI

• Did migration alter the path of the demographic transition for French Canadians in the United States?

  The History of the Family · 2025-01-07

  articleOpen access

  Large numbers of Canadians, of both English and French descent, migrated to the United States between 1850 and 1930. In Canada, French-Canadian fertility and child mortality rates were about 50% higher than English Canadian rates. Although the English-Canadian and U.S. white population of native-born parentage experienced rapid fertility declines beginning in the mid to late nineteenth century, there is no sign of significant fertility decline among French Canadians before the twentieth century. We use the number of women's children ever born and the number of surviving children in the IPUMS 1910 full-count census dataset to examine whether migration to the United States altered the timing of the demographic transition for French Canadians. We conduct multivariate analyses to examine correlates of child mortality and fertility (including separate analyses of birth spacing and stopping behaviors), focusing on variables related to the migratory experience. The results indicate that while large differentials in child mortality and fertility persisted between the French- and English-Canadian populations living in the United States, the mortality and fertility of second-generation French Canadians converged significantly toward English-Canadian levels. Other characteristics associated with greater integration into American society yield similar results, with women in exogamous unions, who could speak English, and who resided in enumeration districts with lower proportions of French Canadians experiencing significantly lower fertility and child mortality rates. As expected, the demographic regime of English-Canadian women was similar to US-born women of US-born parentage.

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• The Impact of Multiple Births on Fertility: Stopping and Spacing in the United States During the Demographic Transition

  Demography · 2024-09-25 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Multiple births strain mothers' and families' resources in ways that should highlight preferences for family size, birth spacing, and parity-dependent stopping behavior. Couples with surviving twins reach their target family size sooner than other couples and should be more likely to practice family limitation. Twins are also a greater burden on the mother's time and health, which could lead to postponing the next birth, even among couples who want additional children. We examine these hypotheses by analyzing families with twins in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Censuses. Using reconstructed birth histories for more than 7 million women in the IPUMS full-count 1900 and 1910 datasets and event-history methods (Kaplan-Meier curves, cure models), we find clear evidence of family limitation following a multiple birth. Couples who had twins or triplets were more likely to stop childbearing, and those who continued having children delayed their next birth. Responses to multiple births were larger in groups previously identified as leaders in the transition to smaller families, and roughly one third of couples stopped after one or two children. We find no evidence that some groups relied primarily on birth spacing to reduce family size while others relied primarily on stopping.

  PublisherDOI

• THE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND MORTALITY CONSEQUENCES OF THE FAILURE OF THE FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS BANK

  Innovation in Aging · 2024-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The Freedman’s Savings Bank was chartered in 1865 to serve newly emancipated people across 17 states. Driven by mismanagement and fraud by the bank’s white officials, the bank failed in 1874 ─ costing many depositors large savings. Although there is debate about the short-term financial benefits for Black people of the bank’s creation, there has been no research on the longer-term effects of the bank’s failure on social, economic, or mortality outcomes among depositors who lost their savings. Using linked records from the complete-count 1860 through 1940 U.S. Censuses and exceptionally detailed records on the bank’s branches, deposits, and losses, we use a variety of empirical estimation strategies to estimate the effects of the bank’s failure on the life course outcomes of Black depositors and their children. This work speaks more broadly to the effects of negative economic shocks on the long-term well-being of older people.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Maternal Mortality and Gender Differences in Adult Mortality in Early New England

  The William and Mary Quarterly · 2024-07-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: Published estimates of adult mortality and life expectancy in early America are based on poor data, faulty methods, and small numbers of cases. Estimates for women are especially difficult to make and are often inaccurate. This study relies on the remarkably complete and reliable demographic data available for the graduates of Yale College and their wives to examine gender differences in mortality and life expectancy. Because these data are nearly complete, mortality differences can be estimated without significant measurement bias. The results indicate that women married to Yale graduates suffered higher mortality during their peak childbearing years relative to their husbands, but lower mortality afterwards. Much of the difference in mortality under the age of fifty appears to be related to maternal mortality, but gender differences in mortality from other causes such as tuberculosis also appears to be important. This study also examines perceptions of the risk of death in childbearing among white women in early America and suggests that while religion provided an interpretive framework that may have overemphasized the risk, the cumulative risk of death from maternal causes was nontrivial and rightly feared by pregnant women, who took active measures to mitigate their fears and eventually to reduce their fertility.

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• Introduction to <i>Fatal Years</i> 30 Years Later: New Research On Child Mortality in the Past Special Issue

  Social Science History · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract 2021 marked the 30-year anniversary of the publication Fatal Years: Child Mortality in the late Nineteenth-Century United States , a pioneering work in historical demography by Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines. This special issue showcases the current state of historical mortality studies through a collection of articles originally presented at two commemorative sessions at the 2021 meeting of the Social Science History Association. It provides new and more nuanced evidence on several of the major themes of Fatal Years in terms of the mortality experience and includes studies of a wide range of contexts, from North America, to Ireland, England and Wales, and continental Europe. They all bring new evidence and leverage the dramatic development that has taken place in availability of large-scale micro-level data in the 30 years since Fatal Years was published. This introduction first provides some background to the collection and then summarizes the main findings from the different articles included. Preston and Haines provide a coda to this collection with a short reflection article on researching and writing Fatal Years .

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Recent grants

• NIH Grant K01HD052617

  NIH · $652k · 2011

• Models of Demographic and Health Changes following Military Conflict

  NIH · $2.9M · 2015–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Michael R. Haines

  33 shared

• Bernd Raffelhüschen

  20 shared

• Evan Roberts

  9 shared

• Martin Dribe

  7 shared

• Matthew Jaremski

  7 shared

• Tobias Hackmann

  6 shared

• Jonas Helgertz

  5 shared

• Francesco Scalone

  University of Bologna

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article published in Civi…
• NICHD Career Development Award, “The Decline of Fertility in…