Collaborative Research: The Differential Impact of Morbid Diseases on the Productivity of Black and White Labor in the Agricultural South

美国奴隶制的效率和盈利性在经济史上一直是广泛辩论的主题。在比较自由农场和奴隶农场的农业产出时，现代经济史文献忽略了疾病对不同种族群体的不同影响。然而，有充分的经验、科学和历史证据表明，不同种族遗产的人群对许多疾病病原体有不同的反应。特别是，热带西非血统的人对热带西非地方性疾病的反应往往比大多数欧洲血统的人温和得多。由于非洲奴隶贸易，这些“温暖的天气”疾病成为美洲的地方病。这项研究考察了不同种族对疾病的反应在美国经济史上所起的作用。这项研究模拟并估计了一种特定疾病--钩虫--对人类生产力的影响及其对不同祖先的人的不同影响。钩虫的不同种族影响对人类生产力产生了不同的影响，因此引发了对战前美国奴隶制经济学现有分析的质疑。这项研究结合了生物科学、历史和经济分析，考察了生物环境与人类经济和社会的相互作用。具体地说，该研究估计了美国南部白人和黑人农场的全要素生产率差异，这可以归因于地方性钩虫对白人和黑人农业劳动力的影响。为了实现这一点，它使用了20世纪初南方某一特定地区钩虫流行和强度的数据。关于白人和黑人钩虫负担的数据，以及白人和黑人农场的农业投入和产出的数据被用于生产率估计。通过这些数据，估计了钩虫对雇用非洲血统劳动力的农场和雇用欧洲血统劳动力的农场之间生产率差异的影响。这项研究使用了控制其他潜在混杂变量的估计技术。对钩虫对二十世纪初南方农业黑人和白人生产力的影响的估计被用来评估南北战争前南方奴隶和自由农场的相对效率和生产力。

The efficiency and profitability of American slavery have been subject to extensive debates in economic history. In comparing the agricultural outputs of free and slave farms, the modern economic history literature has ignored the disparate effects of diseases on different ethnic groups. Yet there is ample evidence, empirical, scientific, and historical, that populations of different ethnic heritages have different responses to many disease pathogens. In particular, people of tropical West African ancestry tend to have much milder reactions to the "warm weather" diseases that are endemic to tropical West Africa than do most people of European ancestry. These "warm weather" diseases became endemic to the Americas as a result of the African slave trade. The present study examines the role that the differential ethnic reactions to disease played in American economic history. The study models and estimates the impact of a specific disease, hookworm, on human productivity and its disparate effects on peoples of different ancestry. The disparate ethnic effects of hookworm differentially affect human productivity, and consequently raise questions about the existing analysis of the economics of slavery in Antebellum America. The study examines the interactions of the biological environment with the human economy and society, integrating biological science, history, and economic analysis.Specifically, the study estimates the differences in total factor productivity between white and black farms in the American South that can be attributed to the impact of endemic hookworm on white and black agricultural labor. To accomplish this, it employs data on the prevalence and intensity of hookworm in a specific area in the early twentieth-century South. The data on the hookworm burden of whites and blacks, and agricultural inputs and outputs on white and black farms are employed in the productivity estimates. With the data, estimates are made for the impact that hookworm had on differences in productivity between farms that employed labor of African ancestry and farms that employed labor of European ancestry. The study employs estimation techniques that control for other potential confounding variables. The estimates for the impact of hookworm on black and white productivity in the early twentieth-century agricultural South are used to assess the relative efficiency and productivity of slave and free farms in the Antebellum South.