Tagged: inheritance

“Had such a racial land reform taken place in the United States during the late 1860s, it is easy to envision that the vast current differences in wealth between blacks and nonblacks would not exist. Although the black-white per-capita income ratio is in the upper 50 percent range, the highest estimates of the racial wealth ratio run in the 15–25 percent range (Chiteji, 1999). Since the major sources of wealth for most persons today are inheritance and in vivo transfers (Darity and Nicholson, 2005), a past history of wealth deprivation has dramatic intergenerational effects.”

Source: William Darity, Jr. Forty Acres and a Mule in the 21st Century. Social Science Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September 2008.