Trevon D. Logan's Webpage
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Assistant Professor of Economics
Faculty Affiliate, Initiative in Population Research
Faculty Affiliate, Center for Human Resource Research
The Ohio State University
Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research
410 Arps Hall
1945 North High Street
Columbus, Ohio 43210
Electronic Mail:
logan dot 155 at osu dot edu
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About Me
I am an economist who specializes in economic history, economic demography, and biodemography. I also do work that intersects with health economics, applied econometrics, applied microeconomics and development economics. My research agenda covers three general areas: (1) Historical Living Standards. This includes analysis of nutritional well-being, household allocation of resources, economies of scale in the household, and comparative measures of living standards over time. I am currently branching out to work that looks at childhood health in the past and at various aspects of economic change in the last two centuries. Most of my historical work uses historical household surveys, but also includes some new data to look at topics such as the returns to education in the early twentieth century. (2) Biodemography. In this area I am currently looking at the modeling of physiological capital, estimating the rate of transmission of physiological capital (mother to child) in the twentieth century, and looking at the convergence in biomarkers between groups in the last two hundred years. In particular, most of my work in this area looks at longitudinal sources to measure the extent and consequences of human physiological change, with an eye towards projecting future trends in health, mortality and morbidity. To that end, I am also investigating the use of cohort BMI and height in mortality forecasting models. (3) Applied Demography. My largest project in this area looks at the phenomenon of dowries in South Asia with my co-author Raj Arunachalam. So far, we have looked at the different motivations for dowries, and we have found some evidence for heterogeneity in dowry motives. We are also looking at the issue of dowry inflation and the role that family planning programs have on dowries in this part of the world. In addition, I am also returning to work that looks at the role of human capital in the migration of African Americans before World War I.
Working Papers
Abstract: This paper is the first systematic attempt to measure the existence and degree of dowry inflation in South Asia. The popular press
and scholarly literature have assumed dowry inflation in South Asia for some time, and there are now a number of theoretical papers that have attempted
to explain the rise of dowries in South Asia. Despite these advances, there has been no systematic study of dowry inflation. Using large-sample retrospective survey data from India,
Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, we assess the empirical evidence for dowry infllation. We find no evidence that real dowry amounts have systematically increased over time in South Asia.
Abstract: Household economies of scale arise when households with multiple members share public goods, making larger households better off at lower per capita expenditures. While estimates of household economies of scale are critical for measuring income and living standards, we do not know how these scale economies change over time. I use American household expenditure surveys to produce the first comparable historical estimates of household scale economies. I find that scale economies changed significantly from 1888 to 1935 for all expenditure categories considered (food, clothing, entertainment, and housing), but not all trends in scale economies are consistent with theoretical predictions. I use these historical estimates of household scale economies to resolve several theoretical and empirical puzzles in the literature. I find that existing explanations for puzzles in the household economies of scale literature do not hold in the past. As such, our notions about household economies of scale must be reassessed in light of this historical evidence.
Abstract: A recent literature has advanced the use of Engel curves to estimate overall CPI bias. In this paper, I show that the methodology is sensitive to the modeling of household demography. Existing estimates of CPI bias do not account for the changing effect of household size on budget shares, and this can lead to omitted variable bias. Since the effect of household size on demand changes over time the drift in Engel curves attributed to CPI bias is partially explained by this effect. My estimates of the annual rate of CPI bias from 1888 to 1935 are changed by at least 25%, and usually more than 50%, once the changing effect of household size is accounted for.
Abstract: This is the first paper to document the effect of health on the migration propensities of African Americans in the Nineteenth Century. Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave status—former slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants.
Abstract: College football fans, coaches, and observers have adopted a set of beliefs about how college football poll voters behave. I document three pieces of conventional wisdom in college football regarding the timing of wins and losses, the value of playing strong opponents, and the value of winning by wide margins. Using a unique data set with 25 years of AP poll results, I test college football’s conventional wisdom. In particular, I test (1) whether it is better to lose early or late in the season, (2) whether teams benefit from playing stronger opponents, and (3) whether teams are rewarded for winning by large margins. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I find that (1) it is better to lose later in the season than earlier, (2) AP voters do not pay attention to the strength of a defeated opponent, and (3) the benefit of winning by a large margin is negligible. I conclude by noting how these results inform debates about a potential playoff in college football.
Abstract: The existing literature on skill-biased technical change has not considered how the technological endowment itself plays a role in the returns to skill. This paper constructs a simple model of skill biased technical change which highlights the role that resource endowments play in the returns to education. The model predicts variation in returns to education with skill biased technological change if there is significant heterogeneity in resource endowments before the technological change. Using a variety of historical sources, we document the heterogeneous technology levels by region in the American past. We then estimate the returns to education of high school teachers in the early
twentieth century using a new data source. a report from the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1909. Overall, we find significant regional variation in the returns to education that match differences in resource endowments, with large (within-occupation) returns for the Midwest and Southwest (7%), but much lower returns in the South (3%) and West (0.5%). We also show that our results are generalizable to returns to education in the United States and that returns to education for teachers tracked quite closely with the overall returns to education from 1940 onward.
Abstract: Dowries have been modeled as pre-mortem bequests to daughters or as groom-prices paid to inlaws. These two classes of models yield mutually exclusive predictions, but empirical tests of these predictions have been mixed. We argue that the heterogeneity of findings can be explained by a heterogeneous world—some households use dowries as a bequest and others use dowries as a price. We estimate a model with heterogeneous dowry motives and use the predictions from the competing theories in an exogenous switching regression to place households in the price or bequest regime. Our empirical strategy generates multiple, independent checks on the validity of regime assignment. Using retrospective marriage data from rural Bangladesh, we find robust evidence of heterogeneity in dowry motives in the population; that bequest dowries have declined in prevalence and amount over time; and that bequest households are better off compared to price households on a variety of welfare measures.
Abstract: According to conventional income measures, nineteenth century American and British industrial workers were two to four times as wealthy as poor people in developing countries today. Surprisingly, however, today’s poor are less hungry than yesterday’s wealthy industrial workers. The estimated calorie income elasticities of American and British industrial workers in the 1888 Cost of Living Survey are greater than calorie elasticity estimates for households in developing countries today. The result is robust to measurement error, unreported food consumption, indirect estimation bias, and accounting for dietary substitution as income increases. This finding implies substantial nutritional improvements among the poor in the twentieth century. Using the Engel curve implied by the historical calorie elasticities, I derive new income estimates for developing countries that are six to ten times greater than those derived using purchasing power parity or GDP deflators.
Abstract: I analyze the intrahousehold allocation of resources among nineteenth century industrial families. The narrative record and economic theory suggest that we should find allocation differences by gender. Using a large survey of industrial households in the late nineteenth century, I find no evidence of gender bias in household allocations to children, nor can I reject the hypothesis that allocations were efficient. These findings cannot be explained by parental egalitarianism. I find that parents were strategic out of necessity—the future cooperation of children was unknown and highly uncertain, tempering any desire for gender bias in household allocations. Narrative and quantitative evidence supports this conclusion.
Taste and Taste Formation (with Paul Rhode) (Coming Soon)
HIV/AIDS and Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Stacy Sneeringer) (Coming Soon)
The Hustler's Hustle (with Manisha Shah) (Coming Soon)
Published Articles
Food, Nutrition, and Substitution in the Late Nineteenth Century Explorations in Economic History Vol. 43 No. 3 (2006)
Is the Calorie Distribution Log-Normal? Evidence from the Nineteenth Century Historical Methods Vol. 39, No. 3 (2006)
