The Union Army Project (UAP)

DESCRIPTION: In order to create a dataset containing a complete picture of the life experiences of the recruits in the sample, archival records were collected for each recruit, and entered in to machine-readable datasets. The records were collected from a variety of sources, broken down into three main groups: military records, Surgeons' Certificates, and census records. The military records consist of archival material on the recruits' experiences during the war, such as duty rosters, enlistment information, and military hospital-stay data. Also included in the Military, Pension and Medical Records are materials in each recruit's pension file. Each time a recruit applied for pension after the war, either a new pension or a change in his previous pension, he had to undergo a rigorous examination by a board of government-certified doctors. The results of these examinations are recorded in the Surgeons' Certificates, the second major source of data for the Union Army project. The Surgeons' Certificates contain a richly detailed record of each recruit's health from after the war until his death. Finally, we searched for the records of each recruit in our sample in the U.S. Federal Censuses of 1850, 1860, 1900, and 1910. These censuses contain information about the households which the recruits were living in, and their socioeconomic status over time. Data is collected not just about the recruit, but also about the other members of the recruit's household. Using the Census Records, a detailed picture of the family structure and the socioeconomic conditions can be drawn for the members of the sample. Throughout the separate datasets of the Union Army sample, each recruit can be identified by his unique 10-digit identification number, stored in the variable "recidnum." The data in the Union Army Data Set comprises a portion of the historical data collected by the project Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death. (This information was taken from the Union Army Project Web Site, Data Sources page - see below.)

ORIGINATING AGENCY / PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: Collected under the direction of the Department of Economics at Brigham Young University (BYU) and processed by the Center for Population Economics (CPE) at the University of Chicago.

RELATED WEB SITES: 
CPE Union Army Project Web Site
Data Extraction Page

PRI FACULTY, AFFILIATES, AND STUDENTS:  The CPE also has placed all of the data onto their site for extraction. Please note that there are variables for the Surgeons' dataset that are incorrect. Please see this page that deals with the variables in this dataset. A contact is listed on the page.

DATA DISSEMINATED BY:  Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago