Historical Public Crime and Intergenerational Mobility of Blacks: Evidence from Lynching Activity in the US South

Abstract

This paper examines the long-term effect of a historical public crime, namely lynching, against Black offenders in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries on the current local rates of intergenerational mobility of Black people. I find that higher historical lynching activity exerts a negative effect on the current economic opportunities of Blacks, potentially through racism and hatred. I corroborate this by instrumenting lynching with the local historical railway and population expansion. The results do not hold for Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, and are valid to a large set of robustness checks.