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Title: Cultural Transmissions and Initial Wealth Accumulation: Evidence from an American Indian Reservation, 1894-1906

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2013

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Abstract: Can vertically transmitted traits predict wealth inequality and, if so, how quickly do these traits influence wealth? I address these questions by exploiting differences in per-industrial rates of pastoralism between European-Americans and southeastern U.S. Indians to identify the role of vertically transmitted traits on the behavior of their descendants. I hypothesize that descendents of bi-racial marriages held different skills or preferences toward animal husbandry than descendents of homogamous (i.e., solely between Indians) marriages. To test this hypothesis, I use agricultural data from newly recovered agricultural censuses over the years 1894-1906 for the Cherokees living on the Eastern Band Reservation in North Carolina and link these data to three-generational genealogies of each head of household to these censuses. In the fully specifies model, I find that the accumulated holdings of livestock were 43 percent higher in Cherokee households with at least one European American ancestor than households with only Cherokee ancestors, even after controlling for religious and township-level fixed effects. Given the similar history of grain production in both societies, in the main falsification test, I find that the positive effect of European American ancestory on crop output is economically smaller and statistically different than the effect on livestock wealth.

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Authors: Gregg, Matthew T.

Publisher: Roger Williams University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other, Race and Ethnicity

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