Members of the U.S. Congress whose ancestors were slaves have a higher average net worth than those whose ancestors did not, according to a new analysis released Wednesday. From PLOS ONE.
The analysis, using genealogy data published last year by Reuters research team, found that at least 100 members of Congress are descended from slave owners in 2021, including 8% of Democrats and 28% of Republicans.
The report caught the eye of Neil K. R. Segal, a doctoral student and computational social science researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, who wondered what would be revealed if this unique genealogy data was combined with other publicly available information about members of Congress, particularly financial disclosure documents.
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“It was only because we had access to detailed genealogical data and financial disclosures of members of Congress that we were able to investigate this connection,” Segal says.
The racial wealth gap in the United States is staggering. While more than one-fifth of white households have a net worth of more than $1 million, more than one-fifth of Black households have zero or negative net worth. This extreme disparity began with slavery and is perpetuated by racist policies and practices in housing, education, employment, voting and more, preventing many Black Americans from acquiring wealth and passing it on to future generations.
“There’s a lot of research on the descendants of slaves, but less on people who benefited from slavery,” Segal says. A 2020 study by sociologist Robert Rees of the University of Texas at Austin showed that whites in counties with higher slavery rates now have better socioeconomic outcomes. And a study of slave-owning households found that families who enslaved nine or more people lost more wealth after the Civil War than families with fewer slaves, but that the grandchildren of slave owners had nearly recovered their wealth by 1940. But because census records from that point on are sealed, researchers haven’t been able to track the outcomes of those families to this day.
The Reuters reporting allowed Sehgal and his co-author, his father Ashwini Sehgal, a nephrologist at Case Western Reserve University, to paint a much more detailed picture of how wealth generated by forced labor still benefits the descendants of slave owners today.
“This is an individual, yet Alive, “This is a remarkable study,” says Rees, who was not involved in the new research. “It’s one of the first studies of its kind in the history of slavery studies,” he says. He estimates that slavery studies itself is only about 10 years old.
The Segals’ study matched financial disclosure documents digitized by Business Insider for each of the 535 Congress members who were in office (or had a vacancy not yet filled) in April 2021. The researchers calculated each Congress member’s net worth by subtracting liabilities from assets. They then compared the median net worth among four groups: those with zero ancestors who employed slaves, those with one to five, six to 15, and 16 or more ancestors who employed slaves.
The more people a member of Congress enslaved their ancestors, the higher their median net worth was, even after controlling for age, race, sex, ethnicity, and education level. Those whose ancestors enslaved 16 or more people had a median net worth five times higher than those with no slave-owning ancestors, a difference of $3.93 million.
Amanda Montañez, Source: “Slave-owning Ancestors and Current Net Worth of U.S. Members of Congress,” by Neil K. R. Sehgal and Ashwini R. Sehgal, PLOS ONE. Published online August 21, 2024
The study shows how people continue to benefit from slavery, Rees said, “and I think that makes a strong argument in favor of something like racial reparations.”
Reese added that the results likely underestimate the connection between slavery history and current Congressional wealth. The Reuters report only counted people who were enslaved by direct lineal slave owners, not the total number of people enslaved by all of their direct ancestors. Some people may also have benefited from having slave owner uncles, cousins or other non-direct ancestors, but they are not counted in this analysis. Others may have ancestors who were involved in industries that benefited from slavery, even if they didn’t directly enslave anyone. This could include the shipping industry, banks that made loans to buy slaves, or companies that insured slaves, Reese said.
Additionally, members of Congress are not required to report federal retirement accounts or personal homes that don’t generate income, and lawmakers are permitted to report the value of large assets within broad ranges that could understate their value.
These results are specific to Congress, and this group is not financially representative of the rest of the country. The median net worth of members of Congress in 2021 was $1.28 million overall, far higher than that of the general population. According to the most recent Census, the median household wealth in the United States was $166,900, with white households ($250,400) having 10 times the wealth of black households ($24,520).
“The overall results are consistent with previous research on the persistence of wealth and how wealth perpetuates itself over time,” says Neel K. R. Sehgal. “The descendants of people who were wealthy or elite in the past are still very wealthy and elite today.”
A similar study could be conducted on the general population, but it would be a daunting task for researchers and would require a larger sample size and therefore substantial funding, Reese says. Still, the Congress-specific results are valuable in their own right in tracing the lasting impact of slavery on American wealth and politics. “This is really the population that runs the country,” Reese says. “If you were going to set aside any population to analyze in this way, I can’t think of a better one.”
Slavery reparations bills have been stalled on the House and Senate floors for decades. A bill called House Resolution 40, named for an unfulfilled promise from the U.S. government in 1865 to give every formerly enslaved adult male “40 acres of land and a mule,” has been introduced annually since 1989. A bill co-sponsored by 130 Democrats this year would create a commission to study and develop a plan for reparations for black Americans, but it has never been brought to a vote.
Several lawmakers with ties to slavery have co-sponsored reparations bills in the House or Senate, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whose great-great-grandfather enslaved 14 people, and Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, whose great-great-grandfather enslaved three people.
“These findings are disturbing, but they only strengthen my support for the cause of truth, justice and fairness today,” Doggett told Reuters last year.
Republicans have largely opposed any consideration or proposal of reparations. At a 2022 Trump rally, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, whose great-great-grandfather enslaved six people, equated those who would benefit from reparations with criminals. “They shouldn’t be paid,” Tuberville said. He has a net worth of at least $4.5 million.
