EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family

Graziella Bertocchi () and Arcangelo Dimico

No 13312, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We empirically assess the effect of historical slavery on the African American family structure. Our hypothesis is that female single headship among blacks is more likely to emerge in association not with slavery per se, but with slavery in sugar plantations, since the extreme demographic and social conditions prevailing in the latter have persistently affected family formation patterns. By exploiting the exogenous variation in sugar suitability, we establish the following. In 1850, sugar suitability is indeed associated with extreme demographic outcomes within the slave population. Over the period 1880-1940, higher sugar suitability determines a higher likelihood of single female headship. The effect is driven by blacks and starts fading in 1920 in connection with the Great Migration. OLS estimates are complemented with a matching estimator and a fuzzy RDD. Over a linked sample between 1880 and 1930, we identify an even stronger intergenerational legacy of sugar planting for migrants. By 1990, the effect of sugar is replaced by that of slavery and the black share, consistent with the spread of its influence through migration and intermarriage, and black incarceration emerges as a powerful mediator. By matching slaves' ethnic origins with ethnographic data we rule out any influence of African cultural traditions.

Keywords: black family; slavery; sugar; migration; culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J47 N30 O13 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13312.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
Working Paper: Bitter Sugar: Slavery and the Black Family (2020) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13312

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-30
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13312