U.S. Senators and Representatives whose family had a history of enslaving others have greater present-day wealth
The analysis used genealogical data published last year by an investigative team at Reuters, which found that in 2021, at least 100 members of CongressThis reporting caught the eye of Neil K. R. Sehgal, a Ph.D. student and computational social science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He wondered what this unique genealogical data might reveal when combined with other publicly available information about members of Congress—particularly their financial disclosure forms..
The Sehgals’ study matched each of the 535 congressional members who were in office in April 2021 to their financial disclosure filings, which had been digitized by. The researchers computed each member’s net worth by subtracting liabilities from assets. Next, they compared the median net worth between four groups: those whose ancestors enslaved zero people and those with forebears who enslaved between one and five, six and 15, or 16 or more people.
The study shows how people “continue to benefit from this institution” of slavery, Reece says. “And I think that is a strong argument for things like racial reparations.” These results are specific to Congress, a group that is not financially representative of the rest of the country. The legislators’ median net worth in 2021 was $1.28 million overall, far higher than that of the general population. The“The overall result tracks with past research how durable wealth is and how wealth perpetuates over time,” Neil K. R. Sehgal says. “People who were wealthier or more elite in the past, their offspring are still very wealthy and very elite.
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