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This article evaluates the high-profile claim that enslaved African-Americans produced over 50 percent of US national product in the pre-Civil War period. The accounting exercise shows the fraction was closer to (and indeed likely slightly below) the share of the population, that is, about 12.6 percent in 1860. The enslaved population had higher rates of labor force participation, but they were also forced to work in sectors–agriculture and domestic service—with below average output per worker. The economic surplus generated by the enslaved was due chiefly to the low value of the very basic consumption bundle provided rather than to exceptionally high values of production per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper provides the first quantitative assessment of colonial Jamaican real incomes and income inequality. We collect local prices to construct cost of living and purchasing power parity indicators. The latter lowers Jamaica's GDP per capita compared with the rest of the Atlantic economy. We also compute welfare ratios for a range of occupations and build a social table. We find that, being a net food importer, the slave colony had extremely high living costs, which rose steeply during the American War of Independence, and low standards of living, particularly for its enslaved population, but also for the free unskilled population that competed with slave labor. Our results also show that due to its extreme poverty for the many in the middle of great wealth for the few, Jamaica was the most unequal place yet studied in the pre-modern world. Furthermore, all of these characteristics applied to the free population alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2008.06.003 Byline: Trevon D. Logan Keywords: Health; Migration; Civil war; African-Americans Abstract: Using both IPUMS and the Colored Troops Sample of the Civil War Union Army Data, I estimate the effects of literacy and health on the migration propensities of African-Americans from 1870 to 1910. I find that literacy and health shocks were strong predictors of migration and the stock of health was not. There were differential selection propensities based on slave status -- former slaves were less likely to migrate given a specific health shock than free blacks. Counterfactuals suggest that as much as 35% of the difference in the mobility patterns of former slaves and free blacks is explained by differences in their human capital, and more than 20% of that difference is due to health alone. Overall, the selection effect of literacy on migration is reduced by one-tenth to one-third once health is controlled for. The low levels of human capital accumulation and rates of mobility for African-Americans after the Civil War are partly explained by the poor health status of slaves and their immediate descendants. Author Affiliation: The Ohio State University, 410 Arps Hall, 1945 North High Street, Columbus, OH 43210, USA NBER, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Article History: Received 12 November 2007 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by a grant from the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the NIH (Grant number P01 AG10120). I thank William Collins, Lisa Cook, William Darity, Chulhee Lee, Robert Margo, Jonathan Pritchett, William Spriggs, Richard Steckel, Warren Whatley, seminar participants at the University of Michigan, Howard University, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions. I thank Joseph Burton, Dora Costa, Alex Gendlin, Carlos Villarreal and Noel Yetter for help with the Colored Troops data, and Jonathan Burns, Yevgen Polishchuk, Blair Russell and Melissa Wong for exemplary research assistance. This work originated in a series of discussions with Prof. Herbert H. Hill (1924-2004), to whom this paper is dedicated. The usual disclaimer applies.

Using a rich sample of admission records from New Orleans Touro Infirmary, we examine the in-hospital mortality risk of free and enslaved patients. Despite a higher mortality rate in the general population, slaves were significantly less likely to die in the hospital than the whites. We analyze the determinants of in-hospital mortality at Touro using Oaxaca-type decomposition to aggregate our regression results. After controlling for differences in characteristics and maladies, we find that much of the mortality gap remains unexplained. In conclusion, we propose an alternative explanation for the mortality gap based on the selective hospital admission of slaves. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We construct a unique data set from succession and bankruptcy sales in Mauritius to investigate the determinants of slave prices between 1825 and 1827. We find that males, females sold with children, skilled slaves and slaves sold during the peak sugar cane harvest season all fetched higher prices. In comparison, handicapped and non-native slaves were sold at a discount. Moreover, the young child premium increased over the period. This may indicate that slave owners did not anticipate that slavery would be abolished in the near future or thought that they would be compensated in such an event. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

When the enslaved were emancipated across the British Empire in 1834, slave-owners received cash compensation, and four years of unpaid labour as the former slaves became apprentices. In the Cape Colony, appraisers assigned a value to the former slaves. To investigate this, we transcribed 37,411 valuation records to compile a novel emancipation dataset. This gives us a new picture of the enslaved population in the Cape at the time of the emancipation. Some of our findings, for example that slaves from south-east Asia were assigned lower valuations than Cape-born slaves, are in contrast to those of an earlier literature. To distinguish between what the former slave-owners should have received and what they actually received, we matched the valuation records to the compensation claims. We argue that the uneven allocation of compensation had important implications for the distribution of capital after emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]