Land, Property & Wealth Owners as a Comparison of Public Policy & Government History

Description

This study presents one of the first national studies that combines the migration and race of the economic experiences of free blacks, with an extended analysis of antebellum wealth inequality. In doing so, I analyze economic asymmetry among early blacks and whites in the United States of America. For the data analysis, I used information from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample (IPUMS). I present results of informative property ownership and wealth ratios. This study finds that economic differences among ethnic groups, as measured by differences between early blacks and whites, are intertwined with asymmetrical freedoms. This further confirms symmetry between the socio-economic environment and socio-economic outcomes, and suggests that changing states and changing regions, before and after emancipation, was crucial for blacks to accumulate significant amounts of wealth. To the contrary, whites who stayed in their state of birth possessed higher wealth returns than migrants. This may further imply whites, with longer histories of legal enforced citizenship and larger intergenerational transfers, were more successful growing their wealth by staying. Note that this would exclude the large mass of immigrants from Ireland, England and Germany who grew wealth like blacks, by migrating to places with the smallest legal barriers, that were more social receptive and possessed the greatest economic opportunities.