Freeman Initiative loves to share links to tools and data that we find useful. We hope this information assists you in your endeavors as well.
Does your zip code affect your social mobility? Admittedly, there is some bleakness here, especially for Black Americans. Opportunity Atlas is a comprehensive Census tract-level dataset of children’s socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood using data covering nearly the entire U.S. population. For each tract, it estimates children’s outcomes in adulthood such as earnings distributions and incarceration rates by parental income, race, and gender. These estimates allow us to trace the roots of outcomes such as poverty and incarceration to the neighborhoods in which children grew up. Data sets can be compared by neighborhood and region.
Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn, and Moritz Schularick (2022). Wealth of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860–2020, Ellora Derenoncourt – US Inequality Data (Working paper)
The groundbreaking 2022 study on the largest and most persistent of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, the racial wealth gap. It is the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. This study shows that under the vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would take centuries to achieve even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. However, the current gap would have been at least half of what it is today if discrimination and public policies such as segregation had not suppressed progress in racial wealth convergence during the critical decades after slavery. The white to Black racial wealth gap today is 6 to 1, and this inequality is on track to only grow going forward.
Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson (2019). The Intergenerational Effects of a Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners after the Civil War (aeaweb.org)
An excellent paper from the American Economic Review documenting the persistence of some of the wealth that was created during American chattel slavery. Americans cannot continue to assert that we no longer need to take responsibility for slavery and its legacies, including wealth, because that wealth is not a matter of the past. Yes, white slaveowners experienced huge losses of wealth after the American Civil War and emancipation ended chattel slavery. However, their substantially reduced fortunes were rapidly recovered due to their social networks and political connections. In fact, most of these former slave-owning White households rebuilt much of the lost wealth in just one generation; and within two generations, almost all the wealth had recovered.
Chandra Childers (October 11, 2023). Rooted In Racism And Economic Exploitation: The Failed Southern Economic Development Model (epi.org/272035)
An excellent paper from the Economic Policy Institute debunking the claims of Southern politicians that “business-friendly” policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity for all Southerners. The data actually show the grim economic impact of 150 years of racist, anti-worker policymaking under the guise of a Southern economic development strategy specifically designed to ensure continued access to the cheap labor of Black people following emancipation from slavery and maintain racial hierarchies across the South. The model is characterized by low wages, a regressive tax system, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions. Even unemployment and other benefits are rooted in a racist agenda: the Southern states where most Black Americans live have the least accessible UI systems with the least generous benefits and some of the most onerous requirements. The end goal of all of this is to compel Blacks to accept jobs in the low-wage labor market.
Archer, Deborah N., Transportation Policy and the Underdevelopment of Black Communities (March 4, 2021). 106 Iowa Law Review 2125 (2021), NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 21-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3797364
This is an excellent paper about how patterns of infrastructure development, particularly transportation policies, have been used to intentionally under develop Black communities. It posits that Black people occupy the lowest socioeconomic rung in the ladder of American upward mobility precisely because they have been “integrated” all too well into the system, and that America’s “democratic” government and “free enterprise” system are structured deliberately and specifically to maximize Black oppression.