How does it compare to the US South before the Civil War? The edited highlights of that conversation follow, and the interview can be heard using the podcast player below.Ĭhris Fleisher: A lot of people view the United States as an extraordinarily unequal society today in terms of wealth concentration. The research challenges common narratives around the South’s recovery from the Civil War by documenting the persistence of much of the wealth created from chattel slavery.īoustan recently spoke with Chris Fleisher about how she and her coauthors approached their research and what their findings say about wealth and inequality. In a paper in the American Economic Review, authors Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson find that many former slave-owning White households rebuilt much of their lost wealth in just one generation, and within two generations, most had recovered entirely.Īccording to the authors, this rapid recovery was made possible by non-material advantages, such as social networks and political connections, which persisted in spite of the large loss of wealth. The American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery, and as a result, substantially reduced the fortunes of slaveholding households in the years immediately following the war.
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