Book/Printed Material Colorism and African American wealth evidence from the nineteenth-century South
About this Item
Title
- Colorism and African American wealth evidence from the nineteenth-century South
Summary
- "Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate the relationships between wealth and the recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps into treatment and characteristic effects. In addition to higher wealth holdings of white households as compared to free African-Americans in general, there are distinct differences between both the characteristics of and wealth of free mulatto and black households, whether male- or female-headed. While black-headed households' mean predicted log wealth was only 20% of white-headed households', mulatto-headed households' was nearly 50% that of whites'. The difference between light- and dark-complexion is highly significant in semi-log wealth regressions. In the decomposition of this wealth differential, treatment effects play a large role in explaining the wealth gap between all subpopulation pairs"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Names
- Bodenhorn, Howard
- Ruebeck, Christopher S.
- National Bureau of Economic Research
Created / Published
- Cambridge, MA : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2005.
Headings
- - African Americans--Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century
- - Colorism--Southern State
- - Colorism--Southern States
- - Multiracial people--Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century
- - Wealth--Southern States--History--19th century
- - Southern States--History--19th century
Notes
- - Title from PDF file as viewed on 12/1/2005.
- - Includes bibliographical references.
- - Also available in print.
- - Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- - System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Call Number/Physical Location
- HB1
Digital Id
- https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2005399831
- http://papers.nber.org/papers/W11732 External
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2005399831
Access Advisory
- Unrestricted online access
Online Format
- image