Multiple regression, longitudinal data and welfare in the nineteenth century: Reflections on Yule (1899)

The paper that G. U. Yule read to the Royal Statistical Society in 1899 is, by virtue of its application of multiple regression to observational data, a landmark in social statistics. It is also an illustration of the value of relating a change in an explanatory variable to a change in the response when wishing to draw causal conclusions. This paper returns to Yule's data and analysis from a 21st-century perspective. A range of multilevel and fixed effects models are fitted to the reconstructed data set and his conclusions are re-examined. The social and political contexts of Yule's work are also considered.