Work

Reparations for African enslavement in the United States and Black survival using the panel study of income dynamics

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Activists, policymakers, and scholars increasingly have advocated for reparations payments to Black Americans to redress the harms of enslavement and discriminatory practices that followed. This study examined the effects of a hypothetical monetary reparations intervention on all-cause premature and overall mortality among Black adults in the United States. We used the Black-white wealth gap to calculate monetary costs, modeling the effects of wealth influxes of $905 426.10 (in 2019 USD) to each Black household (the amount necessary to eliminate the mean Black-white wealth gap), distributed over 10 years. We applied a target trial emulation framework to data in the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (n = 16 010). Each Black household head or spouse/partner was followed from baseline until death, incomplete follow-up, 18 years after baseline, or the end of follow-up in 2019, whichever occurred first. Using the g-formula to account for time-fixed and time-varying confounders, we found a 29% reduction in premature mortality and a 25.6% reduction in overall mortality among Black adults under the reparations intervention. Our findings provide evidence that reparations are a lifesaving and justice-promoting social policy that could significantly contribute to efforts to eliminate health inequities. This article is part of a Special Collection on Methods in Social Epidemiology.

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology

DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwae444