About

Katherine Eriksson is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at UC Davis. She is a specialist in applied microeconomics with research interests that encompass economic history, labor economics, development economics, and econometrics. Her research activities primarily focus on economic history and labor economics, and she has also investigated topics related to development economics. Her work has been published in prominent journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Development Economics. Professor Eriksson teaches courses in U.S. economic history and econometrics. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA, earned in 2013, along with a master's degree from UCLA, a master's in Agricultural Economics from Virginia Tech, and undergraduate degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and Mathematics and Philosophy from Virginia Tech. She is a member of the UC Davis Graduate Placement Committee, the American Economic Association, the Cliometric Society, and the Economic History Association.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Machine Learning
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Data Mining
• Computer Science
• History
• Genealogy
• Mathematics
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Psychology
• Demography
• Geography
• Econometrics
• Demographic economics
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Version 1

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding

  <div>These files can be used to recreate the segregation measures in "The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940"</div><div><br>For those interested in the main segregation measures, download "segmeasures.dta" file. This file can be merged based on bpl city county year variables.<br></div>

• Version 1

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherSenior author

  This is the replication package for "<span>Long-run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil."<br><br>Abstract:<br>The boll weevil spread across the South from 1892 to 1922 with devastating effect on cotton cultivation. The resulting shift away from this child labor--intensive crop lowered the opportunity cost of school attendance. We investigate the insect's long-run effect on educational attainment using a sample of adults from the 1940 census linked back to their childhood census records. Both white and black children who were young (ages 4 to 9) when the weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.24 to 0.36 years. Our results demonstrate the potential for conflict between child labor in agriculture and educational attainment.<br></span>

• Replication Package for Finding John Smith: Using Extra Information for Historical Record Linkage

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-04-14

  datasetOpen access

  We introduce a new rule-based linking method for historical Census records. We augment earlier algorithms based on name, age and place of birth (Abramitzky, Boustan, Eriksson, 2012, or “basic ABE”), with five matching characteristics – middle initial, county of residence, and spouse and parents’ names. Relative to basic ABE, ABE-Extra Information (“ABE-EI”) greatly increases match rates, improves accuracy and is similarly representative of the population on most attributes, with geographic mobility being one important exception. Relative to machine learning algorithms, ABE-EI has somewhat lower match rates, greater representativeness, and offers full replicability. We also create the first ABE-based links for women.

  PublisherDOI

• Archival Version

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherSenior author

  This is the replication package for "<span>Long-run Impacts of Agricultural Shocks on Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Boll Weevil."<br><br>Abstract:<br>The boll weevil spread across the South from 1892 to 1922 with devastating effect on cotton cultivation. The resulting shift away from this child labor--intensive crop lowered the opportunity cost of school attendance. We investigate the insect's long-run effect on educational attainment using a sample of adults from the 1940 census linked back to their childhood census records. Both white and black children who were young (ages 4 to 9) when the weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.24 to 0.36 years. Our results demonstrate the potential for conflict between child labor in agriculture and educational attainment.<br></span>

• Marriage and the Intergenerational Mobility of Women: Evidence from Marriage Certificates 1850-1920

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-02-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We document that women's economic mobility improved nearly a century before married women gained broad labor market opportunities.Using Massachusetts marriage registers linked to U.S. censuses , we create new father-child links for women to estimate intergenerational mobility and assortative mating, overcoming a key historical linkage barrier.Estimates from a structural marriage market model suggest assortative mating fell 61% from 1850-1870 to 1900-1920.Counterfactuals imply women's mobility would have been far lower absent the decline in assortative mating.Had late cohorts faced early cohort sorting, the rank-rank slope between a woman's father and husband would have been 2.5 times higher.

  PublisherDOI

• Archival Version

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding

  <div>These files can be used to recreate the segregation measures in "The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940"</div><div><br>For those interested in the main segregation measures, download "segmeasures.dta" file. This file can be merged based on bpl city statefip county year variables.<br></div>

• Replication Package for Finding John Smith: Using Extra Information for Historical Record Linkage

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-04-14

  datasetOpen access

  We introduce a new rule-based linking method for historical Census records. We augment earlier algorithms based on name, age and place of birth (Abramitzky, Boustan, Eriksson, 2012, or “basic ABE”), with five matching characteristics – middle initial, county of residence, and spouse and parents’ names. Relative to basic ABE, ABE-Extra Information (“ABE-EI”) greatly increases match rates, improves accuracy and is similarly representative of the population on most attributes, with geographic mobility being one important exception. Relative to machine learning algorithms, ABE-EI has somewhat lower match rates, greater representativeness, and offers full replicability. We also create the first ABE-based links for women.

  PublisherDOI

• Marriage and the Intergenerational Mobility of Women: Evidence from Marriage Certificates 1850-1920

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Version 2

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding

  <div>These files can be used to recreate the segregation measures in "The Residential Segregation of Immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940"</div><div><br>For those interested in the main segregation measures, download "segmeasures.dta" file. This file can be merged based on bpl city statefip county year variables.<br></div>

• Kindergartens and Intergenerational Mobility

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  article

  We evaluate the impact of free public kindergartens in the early twentieth-century United States on intergenerational mobility for children of immigrant and native parents. Using linked Census and newly digitized kindergarten enrollment data, we find that kindergartens reduced mobility, particularly for children of Eastern and Southern European immigrants. This effect is driven by higher-income families being more likely to attend kindergarten and to convert early enrollment into long-term educational gains. Our findings contribute to the literature on the long-run effects of early childhood interventions.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Pontus Strimling

  156 shared

• B. Gustafsson

  University of Gothenburg

  128 shared

• A. J. Korn

  74 shared

• B. Carry

  73 shared

• S. Bertone

  Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino

  69 shared

• N. Christlieb

  66 shared

• Leah Platt Boustan

  Princeton University

  64 shared

• Timothy C. Beers

  63 shared

Awards & honors

• Cal Poly Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Gran…
• Finalist, Economic History Association's Alan Nevins Dissert…
• Elise Burman Fellowship, UCLA, 2012
• UCLA Center for Economic History fellowship, Fall 2012