Black Americans’ Landholdings and Economic Mobility after Emancipation: New Evidence on the Significance of 40 Acres

William Collins, Nicholas C. Holtkamp and Marianne Wanamaker ()

No 29858, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: N0 N21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-ure
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