The Economic Impact Of Slavery And Jim Crow

You will no doubt be shocked, shocked I say, that slavery during the U.S. Civil War, and Jim Crow institutions after the U.S. Civil War, economically harmed the black families who were subjected to it. But it doesn't hurt to substantiate the obvious every now and then.

This paper studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans’ economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940, and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth than Black families whose ancestors were free before the Civil War. The disparities between the two groups have persisted substantially because most families enslaved until the Civil War lived in states with strict Jim Crow regimes after slavery ended. In a regression discontinuity design based on ancestors’ enslavement locations, we show that Jim Crow institutions sharply reduced Black families’ economic progress in the long run.

From here.