The Ancestry Survey
(DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3630635)
In 2016, we have designed and---with the help of The Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS)---conducted a survey of Poles in the Western Territories of Poland.
The purpose of the survey was to collect information at the individual level about the family histories of migration associated with the mass expulsion of Poles from the Eastern Borderlands (Kresy), the territories that Poland has lost as a result of WWII.
We make the data available for researchers. If you use these data, please cite our paper as the primary source: Becker, Grosfeld, Grosjean, Voigtländer, and Zhuravskaya (2020). "Forced Migration and Human Capital: Evidence from Post-WWII Population Transfers", American Economic Review, 110(5): 1430-63.
Poland before and after the Second World War:
The location of survey respondents in 2016:
The location of the ancestors of the survey respondents in 1939:
The survey was conducted via face-to-face interviews in two samples:
1) a representative sample of the population in the Western Territories (3,169 respondents);
2) an oversample of people in the Western Territories with Kresy origin (900 respondents).
Detailed information on sampling and anonymization
Data:
The permanent address for the survey dataset: