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The Wealth of the Irish in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Livio Di Matteo
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Extract

This article examines a new set of historical microdata for insights on the wealth of the Irish in late-nineteenth-century Ontario. Regression analysis is used to determine whether or not the wealth of the Irish-born differed significantly from that of the Canadian-born and other birthplace groups.

The traditional view has been that the Irish in nineteenth-century North America were impoverished and economically disadvantaged. In the American literature, certainly, Irish immigrants have been viewed as penniless, technologically backward, and inclined to reject rural for urban life because of their experience of famine (Akenson 1988: 48). Recent American empirical work has supported this view. For example, Stephen Herscovici (1993: 329) finds that in nineteenth-century Boston the native-born held significantly more wealth than immigrants and that the wealth of the Irish did not substantially increase over time. Ferrie (1994: 10) finds that the Irish-born were 69% less wealthy than the British-born in 1850 and that this gap rose to 72% in 1860, if age and duration in the United States are controlled for.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 209 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1996 

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