Working Paper: NBER ID: w29858
Authors: William J. Collins; Nicholas C. Holtkamp; Marianne H. Wanamaker
Abstract: The US Civil War ended in 1865 without the distribution of land or compensation to those formerly enslaved—a decision often seen as a cornerstone of racial inequality. We build a dataset to observe Black households’ landholdings in 1880, a key component of their wealth, alongside a sample of White households. We then link their sons to the 1900 census records to observe economic and human capital outcomes. We show that Black landowners (and skilled workers) were able to transmit substantial intergenerational advantages to their sons. But such advantages were small relative to the overall racial gaps in economic status.
Keywords: Black Americans; landholdings; economic mobility; emancipation; racial inequality
JEL Codes: N00; N21
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Fathers' land ownership (Q15) | Sons' home ownership (R21) |
| Fathers' land ownership (Q15) | Sons' literacy (I24) |
| Fathers' land ownership (Q15) | Sons' literacy (compared to farmers who rented) (J43) |
| Fathers' land ownership (Q15) | Sons' economic outcomes (J19) |