Babes in Bondage Parental Selling of Children to Finance Family Migration: The Case of German Migration to North America, 1720-1820

Farley Grubb

No 03-04, Working Papers from University of Delaware, Department of Economics

Abstract: The existence and extent of intra-family debt shifting via selling children into bondage among German immigrant families to North America is documented using quantitative ship manifest and servant auction data. This evidence is at odds with the standard description presented in the literature based on literary sources. Market competition created the opening and colonial welfare laws drove German immigrant parents into selling their children into bondage to finance their own (the parents’) migration, but only for children within a particular and narrow age range. German immigrant parents did not callously treat their children as investment goods.

Keywords: History; Contracts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 37, no. 1 (Summer, 2006), pp. 1-34.

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