Working Paper: NBER ID: w22184
Authors: Brandon Dupont; Joshua Rosenbloom
Abstract: The U.S. Civil War and emancipation wiped out a substantial fraction of southern wealth. The prevailing view of most economic historians, however, is that the southern planter elite was able to retain its relative status despite these shocks. Previous studies have been hampered, however, by limits on the ability to link individuals between census years, and have been forced to focus on persistence within one or a few counties. Recent advances in electronic access to the Federal Census manuscripts now make it possible to link individuals without these constraints. We exploit the ability to search the full manuscript census to construct a sample that links top wealth holders in 1870 to their 1860 census records. Although there was an entrenched southern planter elite that retained their economic status, we find evidence that the turmoil of 1860s opened greater opportunities for mobility in the South than was the case in the North, resulting in much greater turnover among wealthy southerners than among comparably wealthy northerners.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: N11; N31; N91
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Civil War and emancipation (N41) | decline in total wealth for southern wealth holders (N91) |
| Civil War (H56) | decline in property values for southern wealth holders (N91) |
| Civil War (H56) | increase in property holdings for northern wealth holders (H13) |
| Civil War (H56) | greater opportunities for upward and downward mobility among wealthy southerners (J62) |
| Civil War (H56) | higher turnover rate among wealthy southerners (J63) |
| Civil War (H56) | shift in economic power dynamics in the South (O17) |
| Wealth (D31) | insulation from economic shocks in the North (F69) |
| Wealth (D31) | less effective insulation from economic shocks in the South (R11) |