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Title: Suffrage, Schooling, and Sorting in the Post-Bellum U.S. South

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This paper estimates the political and economic effects of the 19th century disenfranchisement of black citizens in the U.S. South. Using adjacent county-pairs that straddle state boundaries, I examine theeffect of voting restrictions on political competition, public goods, and factor markets. I find that poll taxes and literacy tests each lowered overall electoral turnout by 8-22% and increased the Democratic vote share in elections by 1-7%. Employing newly collected data on schooling inputs, I show that disenfranchisement reduced the teacher-child ratio in black schools by 10-23%, with no significanteffects on white teacher-child ratios. I develop a model of suffrage restriction and redistribution in a 2-factor economy with migration and agricultural production to generate sufficient statistics for welfare analysis of the incidence of black disenfranchisement. Consistent with the model, disenfranchised counties experienced a 3.5% increase in farm values per acre, despite a 4% fall in the black population. The estimated factor market responses suggest that black labor bore a collective loss from disenfranchisement equivalent to at least 15% of annual income, with landowners experiencing a 12% gain.

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Authors: Naidu, Suresh

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Publication Number: 18129

Institution: National Bureau of Economic Research

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Publisher Location: Cambridge, MA

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Education, Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration, Other, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

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