Migrating to Riches? Evidence from the California Gold Rush
利用1850和1852年人口普查数据，研究了加州淘金热期间移民的特征及其经济表现，发现矿工收益甚微，而非矿工收益显著。
Gold discoveries in 1848 set off a large and extremely rapid migration to California. This article uses newly collected data from the 1850 and 1852 Censuses of Population together with the public use sample of the 1850 Census of Population to examine who went to California and how they did economically. We find that the propensity to migrate was affected by the individual's age and literacy, distance of the state from California, and average state latitude. Consistent with the historical literature, we find that economic outcomes were generally small or even zero for miners but were positive and large for nonminers.