解放后美国黑人的土地持有与经济流动性:来自农业普查与关联记录的证据

中文摘要

以土地为基础的财富方面巨大而持续存在的种族差距,是重建时期的一项重要遗产。为评估这些差距如何在代际间传递,我们构建了一个数据集,用以观察1880年黑人家庭的土地持有情况,并附有一个白人家庭样本。随后,我们将所有家庭的儿子与1900年人口普查记录关联起来,以观察其经济与人力资本结果。我们表明,相对于劳工,黑人土地所有者向其儿子传递了可观的代际优势,尤其在识字率和住房自有方面。然而,相对于经济地位指标上的种族差距而言,这类优势并不大。

Abstract

Large and persistent racial disparities in land-based wealth were an important legacy of the Reconstruction era. To assess how these disparities were transmitted intergenerationally, we build a dataset to observe Black households’ landholdings in 1880 alongside a sample of White households. We then link sons from all households to the 1900 census records to observe their economic and human capital outcomes. We show that Black landowners, relative to laborers, transmitted substantial intergenerational advantages to their sons, particularly in literacy and homeownership. However, such advantages were small relative to the racial gaps in measures of economic status.