The Economic History Podcast
The Economic History podcast is a platform for sharing knowledge, ideas and new research with a general interest audience. Each fortnight, we meet leading academics in the field and discuss a range of topics, including pandemics, long run economic growth, gender issues, financial crises, inequality, sustainable development and a number of weird and fun economic experiments in history. There is no time like the past to help us understand the present.
The Economic History Podcast
The Dreadful Childhood and Long Shadow of American Slavery
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Episode 19
In this episode, we speak with Professor Richard Steckel on his extensive work using height, nutritional, fertility and mortality data to explain the tragic outcomes of American slave health. We discuss the marriage and fertility patterns of slaves and consider what these implied for their children. After slave liberation, we look at the potential labour market facing freed slaves and the legal and violent backlash visited upon their children's generation.