Abstract
This study introduces a new sample that links people and families across 1860, 1880, and 1900 census data to explore the intergenerational impact of slavery on black families in the United States. Slaveholding—the number of slaves owned by a single farmer or planter—is used as a proxy for experiences during slavery. Slave family structures varied systematically with slaveholding sizes. Enslaved children on smaller holdings were more likely to be members of single-parent or divided families. On larger holdings, however, children tended to reside in nuclear families. In 1880, a child whose mother had been on a farm with five slaves was 49 % more likely to live in a single-parent household than a child whose mother had been on a farm with 15 slaves. By 1900, slaveholding no longer had an impact. However, children whose parents lived in single-parent households were themselves more likely to live in single-parent households and to have been born outside marriage.
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Notes
Author’s calculations using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2017: tables CH-2 and CH-3).
Differential mortality rates between white and black parents could account for some of this difference. Ruggles (1994) adjusted for mortality and found that the gap did not decrease in magnitude.
Freedmen in the Cherokee Nation had their race recorded as “col.,” an abbreviation for “colored.” There was no distinction made between people of all-African versus mixed-race ancestry; “mulatto” was not a racial category.
The Indian-Pioneer Papers (1861–1936) were produced by the WPA and documented experiences in Indian Territory.
Table S2 of the online appendix contains a list of selected Cherokee slave laws.
A child is said to live in a single-parent household if he or she lives only with one of his or her parents. Ruggles (1994) restricted his analysis to children aged 14 years and younger. Of the 872 black children aged 14 years or younger in the Cherokee census, 27 % lived in single-parent households. In unreported results, I use age 14 instead of age 18 to reestimate the regressions in this article. The results remain qualitatively the same.
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Acknowledgments
I am thankful for the guidance and advice of Warren Whatley, Ben Chabot, Martha Bailey, Howard Bodenhorn, Stanley Engerman, Tim Guinnane, Sara LaLumia, and Naomi Lamoreaux; as well as seminar participants at NBER DAE Summer Institute, UCLA, George Mason, UMBC, UCLA, and ASSA. The Economic History Association and the National Science Foundation provided generous financial support.
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Miller, M.C. Destroyed by Slavery? Slavery and African American Family Formation Following Emancipation. Demography 55, 1587–1609 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0711-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0711-6