Enslavers dominated southern politics long after the civil war ended

Before the Civil War, the politics and economy of the Southern US were dominated by those who practiced immoral – but at the time legally permissible – forced enslavement. In new research, Luna Bellani, Anselm Hager, and Stephan Maurer find that the power of enslavers continued following the end of the Civil War. By examining a database of Texas legislators from 1860 to 1900, they determine that by 1900, about half of all lawmakers still came from families which had held people in slavery

Collective negative shocks and preferences for redistribution: Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Germany

Using new data from a three-wave panel survey administered in Germany between May 2020 and May 2021, this paper studies the impact of a negative shock affecting all strata of the population, such as the development of COVID-19, on preferences for redistribution. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change in the severity of the infection rate at the county level, we show that, contrary to some theoretical expectations, the worse the crisis, the less our respondents expressed support for redistribution. We provide further evidence that this is not driven by a decrease in inequality aversion but might be driven by the individuals’ level of trust

The long shadow of slavery: the persistence of slave owners in southern lawmaking

This paper documents the persistence of Southern slave owners in political power after the American Civil War. Using data from Texas, we show that former slave owners made up more than half of all state legislators until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave-owning backgrounds were more likely to be Democrats and voted more conservatively even conditional on party membership. A county's propensity to elect former slave owners was positively correlated with cotton production, but negatively with Reconstruction-era progress of blacks. Counties that elected more slave owners also displayed worse educational outcomes for blacks in the early twentieth century

The long shadow of slavery: the persistence of slave owners in Southern law-making

This paper documents the persistence of the Southern slave owning elite in political power after the end of the American Civil War. We draw on a database of Texan state legislators between 1860 and 1900 and link them to their or their ancestors’ slaveholdings in 1860. We then show that former slave owners made up more than half of nearly each legislature’s members until the late 1890s. Legislators with slave owning backgrounds differ systematically from those without, being more likely to represent the Democratic party and more likely to work in an agricultural occupation. Regional characteristics matter for this persistence, as counties with higher soil suitability for growing cotton on average elect more former slave owners

Multidimensional welfare: do groups vary in their priorities and behaviours?

In the context of multi-dimensional measures of wellbeing, a key question for policy is whether particular groups having differing priorities and are therefore likely to react differently to give economic or social shocks. We explore this issue by presenting the results of two related analyses that suggest positive answers on both counts. We find inter alia that responses to unemployment widowhood and ill-health vary with age, region and sometimes gender. We also develop reference class weights for indices of wellbeing and capabilities and suggest that equal weighting whilst pragmatic may not reflect people's values let alone the variations in these values

Multidimensional welfare: do groups vary in their priorities and behaviours?

In the context of multi-dimensional measures of wellbeing, a key question for policy is whether particular groups having differing priorities and are therefore likely to react differently to give economic or social shocks. We explore this issue by presenting the results of two related analyses that suggest positive answers on both counts. We find inter alia that responses to unemployment widowhood and ill-health vary with age, region and sometimes gender. We also develop reference class weights for indices of wellbeing and capabilities and suggest that equal weighting whilst pragmatic may not reflect people's values let alone the variations in these values

Intergenerational poverty transmission in Europe : the role of education

This paper examines the role of education as causal channel through which growing up poor affects the individual’s economic outcomes as an adult. We contribute to the literature on intergenerational transmission in two ways. First, we apply a potential outcomes approach to quantify the impact of experiencing poverty while growing up and we provide a sensitivity analysis on the unobserved parental ability. Second, we analyze the role of individual human capital accumulation as an intermediate variable and we provide a sensitivity analysis on further possible unobserved confounders. The analysis is based on the module on intergenerational transmission of 2011 of the EU-SILC data, where retrospective questions about parental characteristics (such as education, age, occupation) were asked. We find that, on average, over the 27 European countries considered, growing up poor leads to an increase of 4 percentage points in the risk of being poor and to a decrease of 5% in the adult equivalent income. Moreover, we find that experiencing poverty during childhood will more likely translate into an exclusion from secondary education (of 12 percentage points on average) and that education plays indeed a substantial role accounting for almost 35% of the total effect on adult income.publishe

Heterogeneous Preferences and In-Kind Redistribution

This paper examines the impact of social heterogeneity on in-kind redistribution. We contribute to the previous literature in two ways: we consider i) the provision of several public goods and ii) agents different not only in income, but also in their preferences over the various goods provided by the public sector. In this setting, both the distribution and size of goods provision depend on the heterogeneity of preferences. Our main result is that preference heterogeneity tends to decrease in-kind redistribution, while income inequality tends to increase it. An empirical investigation based on United States Census Bureau data confirms these theoretical findings