Brayden Rothe is a graduate student in the Department of History. He is a demographer, sociologist, and all-around population studies researcher interested in understanding the rapidly changing social and industrial landscape in America between 1850 and 1950. His ongoing research investigates late-nineteenth century U.S. racialized disparities in mortality using full count census data. His dissertation will examine how migration and fertility, the formation of national markets, and the struggle between regional political blocs across the United States after the Civil War contributed to the growing centralization of federal authority, culminating in the Great Depression and the first New Deal.
Brayden currently serves on the MPC Advisory Board and is a Population Studies Trainee. Previously, he has worked as a research assistant on the IPUMS full count datasets of enslaved persons and slaveholders in the United States, the IPUMS Document Archive, and the High School & Beyond Study (now EdSHARe).