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Age and Inequality in Antebellum America

The Case of Kingston, New York

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Stuart M. Blumin
Stuart M. Blumin*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

Readers of this journal have been treated to a lively and interesting debate between Professors Robert Gallman and Edward Pessen over what seems to be emerging as an important issue in American social history—the extent to which population age structure explains observed inequalities in the distribution of wealth. The issue is significant because inequality that is attributable to differences in age does not carry the same implications as inequality attributable to any other source. If young men generally begin their careers in modest circumstances, and generally accumulate wealth as they grow older, the resulting disparities between older and younger men at any moment in time would tend to confirm rather than disprove the hypothesis of fundamental equality in society as a whole. As Gallman puts it, “I earn more income and hold more wealth than does my son. Neither of us regards this as inequitable… nor as evidence of the inegalitarian nature of American society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Summer 1982 , pp. 369 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1982 

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