The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South

Abstract

Building on literatures on racial regimes and the legacy of slavery, this study conceptualizes and constructs a novel measure of the historical racial regime (HRR) and examines how HRR influences contemporary poverty and racial inequality in the American South. The HRR scale measures different manifestations of the U.S. racial regime across different historical periods—slavery and Jim Crow—and is based on state-level institutions including slavery, sharecropping, disfranchisement, and segregation. The analyses use Luxembourg Income Study data (2010–18) for 527,829 Southerners. Results show that residing in a state with stronger HRR is not significantly associated with greater poverty for all and especially not among White Southerners. Rather, a higher level of HRR worsens Black poverty and especially Black-White inequalities in poverty. Further, HRR explains a significant share of the Black-White poverty gap. This study demonstrates the enduring influence of historical state institutions on contemporary poverty and racial inequality.

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