In an eye-opening study that bridges America’s complicated history with its present-day power structures, researchers have uncovered a startling connection between slaveholder ancestry and the current wealth of U.S. Congress members. This revelation not only sheds light on the long-reaching ties of slavery’s economic impact but also raises profound questions about the persistence of privilege and the nature of generational wealth in America.

The study, published in PLOS ONE, examined all 535 members of the 117th Congress, comparing the net worth of those with slaveholding ancestors to those without. The results are eye-opening: legislators whose ancestors owned 16 or more slaves have an average net worth nearly $4 million higher than their colleagues without slaveholding ancestors, even after accounting for factors like age, race, and education.

This finding comes at a time when discussions about racial equity, reparations, and the long-term consequences of slavery are at the forefront of national discourse. It provides concrete evidence that the economic advantages gained through slavery continue to reverberate through American society more than 150 years after emancipation.

The researchers, Neil K. R. Sehgal and Ashwini R. Sehgal, embarked on this study to explore a question that has long puzzled historians and economists: how much does America’s slave-owning past influence today’s social and economic landscape? While previous studies have examined this question at county or state levels, this is the first to draw a direct line from individual slaveholders to their descendants’ current wealth.

To conduct their analysis, the researchers leveraged a unique dataset. They combined financial disclosures required of all Congress members with a meticulous genealogical investigation by Reuters that identified which legislators had slaveholding ancestors and how many individuals those ancestors enslaved.

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