Their research upends the conventional wisdom that slave owners struggled after they lost access to their wealth. We can rule out the generational effect of slave owners’ estates and other resources. The whites with whom former slave owners are compared will have had similar stockpiles of land and property. These white families seem to have drawn upon exceptional social connections, the economists find. The success of slave owners’ sons after emancipation hints that reducing wealth inequality isn’t just a matter of redistributing wealth, Boustan said.

Source: Washington Post April 04, 2019 18:50 UTC