Social Insurance and Public Assistance

POOR RELIEF Series Bf 176–187 733
TABLE Bf 176–187 Local public relief recipients in New York State and New York City, by type of relief: 1840–1895
Continued
Source
Previously unpublished data compiled from the following sources: New York
Secretary of State Annual Reports of the Secretary of State In Relation to the Statistics
of the Poor, 1831–1896, in New York State Legislature, Assembly, Assembly
Documents 1831, volume 1, number 66; 1832, volume 1, number 33; 1833,
volume 2, number 38; 1834, volume 3, number 173; 1835, volume 3, number
185; 1836, volume 2, number 72; 1837, volume 3, number 270; 1838, volume
6, number 311; 1839, volume 3, number 146; 1840, volume 8, number 332;
1841, volume 7, number 227; 1842, volume 5, number 121; 1843, volume
2, number 38; 1845, volume 5, number 197; 1850, volume 6, number 169;
1851, volume 5, number 147; 1853, volume 6, number 120; 1854, volume
4, number 144; 1856, volume 5, number 214; 1858, volume 1, number 10;
1859, volume 3, number 101; 1860, volume 2, number 71; 1861, volume
2, number 60; 1863, volume 8, number 230; 1864, volume 8, number 198;
1865, volume 7, number 147; 1866, volume 7, number 165; 1867, volume
7, number 145; 1868, volume 9, number 88; 1869, volume 6, number 79;
1870, volume 6, number 124; 1871, volume 3, number 46; 1872, volume 3,
number 48; 1873, volume 3, number 32; 1877, volume 9, number 142; 1880,
volume 3, number 62; 1881, volume 4, number 64; 1882, volume 2, number
34; 1884, volume 5, number 59; 1885, volume 5, number 45; 1886, volume
3, number 45; 1887, volume 7, number 46; 1890, volume 10, number 58;
1891, volume 12, number 60; 1892, volume 6, number 43; 1893, volume
10, number 58; 1894, volume 10, number 72; 1895, volume 13, number 74;
1896, volume 18, number 84; and New York State Legislature, Senate, Senate
Documents, 1844, volume 2, number 73; 1847, volume 3, number 100; 1848,
volume 3, number 79; 1849, volume 3, number 83; 1855, volume 3, number
72; 1857, volume 4, number 131; 1862, volume 4, number 65; 1874, volume
4, number 62; 1875, volume 4, number 52; 1876, volume 3, number 46;
1878, volume 2, number 28; 1879, volume 2, number 34; 1883, volume 2,
number 25; 1888, volume 5, number 44; and 1889, volume 6, number 40,
and from New York State Board of Charities, Annual Reports, 1875–1897.
Documentation
See the essay in this chapter on public assistance, colonial times to the 1920s,
for additional information on public relief in New York.
Five-year averages of relief recipients as a percentage of the population
and of the fraction of all recipients supported in the poorhouse appear in
Joan Underhill Hannon, “Shutting Down Welfare: Two Cases From America’s
Past,” Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 37 (2) (1997): 419–38. Relief
recipient data reported here reflect minor corrections and revisions to that
reported for 1835–1860 in Joan Underhill Hannon, “Poverty in the Antebellum
Northeast: The View from New York State’s Poor Relief Rolls,” Journal of
Economic History 44 (4) (1984): 1007–32, and Joan Underhill Hannon, “Poor
Relief Policy in Antebellum New York State: The Rise and Decline of the Poorhouse,”
Explorations in Economic History (Academic Press, 1984), Tables 1 and 5.
Over the second half of the nineteenth century, state law gradually transferred
some categories of relief recipients out of the system of local outdoor
and poorhouse relief. Most significantly, an 1865 act required the removal
of insane paupers from poorhouses to state asylums, and an 1875 act mandated
the removal of children from poorhouses to orphanages or other
charitable institutions. Though local governments paid for the support of
the insane and children in these institutions, the recipients are not included
in the data on local public relief recipients, series Bf176–185. Estimates of
the number of recipients involved are reported in Joan Underhill Hannon,
“Public Relief Dependency before the Welfare State: The Interplay of Life
Cycles, Labor Markets, and Policy in Nineteenth Century New York State”
(unpublished manuscript presented to the American Economic Association,
January 1997), Figure 2.
The relief recipient data are constructed from two tables in the New
York Secretary of State’s Annual Reports on Statistics of the Poor. Table A reports
by county the whole number of paupers relieved or supported and
the number of persons temporarily relieved during the year ended December
1ofeach year. Table E reports by county the number of persons received
into and born in the poorhouse and the number who left the poorhouse
(died, bound out, discharged, or absconded) during the year, along with the
number remaining in the poorhouse on December 1. Unfortunately, some
counties failed to provide information in some categories; and in deriving
state totals, the published reports did not distinguish between zeros and
missing data. Moreover, individual county reports on the number of recipients
are often internally inconsistent.
The reports offer three logical ways to calculate the number supported
in the poorhouse during the year. First, one can subtract the number temporarily
relieved outdoors from the total relieved and supported. Second,
one can add the number in the poorhouse at the end of the previous year
to the number received and born in the poorhouse during the year. Third,
one can take the sum of those reported leaving the poorhouse during the
year and those remaining in the poorhouse at year-end. The three methods
often yielded different results. Sometimes the reason for the discrepancy was
readily apparent. Quite often, for example, it was clear that a county had
included those already in the poorhouse at the end of the previous year in
the number for those received during the year, producing by method 2 a
figure that was too high by exactly the number in the house at the end of the
previous year. If the source of the discrepancy could not be identified and
corrected, the figures reported for number of persons supported in county
and city poorhouses during the year (series Bf178, Bf182, and Bf185) for
the period from 1840 to 1875 are based on the following procedure: If the
differences between the three estimates were small (on the order of less than
5 percentage points), the middle figure was used. If the unexplained discrepancy
was large, the data for that county were not used for that year.
Beginning in 1875, all issues of Annual Reports of the New York State Board of
Charities include data on local public relief. Though the State Board of Charities
worked with the same county superintendents’ annual reports to the
Secretary of State, the Board of Charities did not simply replicate the tables
from the Secretary of State’s Annual Reports. Instead, the Board of Charities
calculated the number of poorhouse recipients according to the second procedure
described earlier (the sum of the number in the poorhouse at the end
of the previous years, and those received and those born in the poorhouse
during the year). They added the resulting figure to the number temporarily
relieved outdoors to get the total number relieved and supported. The figures
reported by the State Board of Charities are always internally consistent but
do not always match those reported by the Secretary of State. Often, notes
to the tables indicate that the Board of Charities returned a report to the
county superintendent for correction or clarification. For the period 1875–
1895, the three methods outlined here were used to derive estimates of the
number supported in the poorhouse from the Annual Reports of the Secretary of
State and those were compared with the figure reported by the State Board
of Charities. If one of the estimates matched that of the Board of Charities
or if the differences between them were small, the figure from the Board of
Charities was used. If there were large inexplicable discrepancies, the data
for that county were not used for that year.
Series Bf176, Bf179, and Bf183. Calculated as the sum of the series on
persons receiving temporary outdoor relief and those supported in the poorhouse.
The series include only those counties for which both poorhouse
and temporary outdoor recipient data are available. Though the counties
included in the data set are the same for all series in a given year, included
counties vary from year to year. As a result, the raw data may not accurately
reflect year-to-year fluctuations in the total number of recipients; and per
capita figures should not be calculated using total state population in the
denominator. For this purpose, series Bf186–187 provide the population of
counties covered by public poor relief data for New York State and for the
state excluding New York City, assuming constant exponential population
growth in each county between Census years.
Series Bf180–181. For 1840–1868, the data come directly from the Annual
Reports of the Secretary of State.From 1869 through 1893, all issues of the Annual
Reports of the Secretary of State report the number of families receiving temporary
outdoor relief in New York City, series Bf181, rather than the number of
individuals. For four of those years, 1890–1893, the number of persons receiving
temporary outdoor relief in New York City is reported in the Annual Report
of the State Board of Charities, and those figures are included in series Bf180.
Series Bf184. Derived from the Annual Reports of the Secretary of State, but includes
only those counties for which data on the number supported in the
poorhouse are also available.