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Ellora Derenoncourt Built the Line

The economist who drew the wealth gap across a century and a half, so the argument could finally start from evidence.

For most of American history there was no single line you could point to and say this is how far apart Black and white wealth stood. She built it.

For most of American history there was no single line you could point to and say this is how far apart Black and white wealth stood, and this is how it moved. The gap was felt in every direction and measured in almost none. Ellora Derenoncourt built the line.

An economist at Princeton, Derenoncourt and her collaborators assembled the first continuous series of the Black-white per-capita wealth ratio running from 1860 to 2020. A hundred and sixty years, drawn from the fragments the official record left behind. Before it, the shape of the gap since Emancipation was a thing you argued about. After it, it is a thing you can see.

The pattern in her work is steady. Take the thing everyone assumes and no one has counted, and count it, so the next argument starts from evidence instead of feeling. The record most needed was the one nobody had kept. She kept it.

That is why she belongs here. Not because she is famous. Because she built the receipts the rest of us cite.

DOCKET

  1. Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn and Moritz Schularick, 'Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860–2020,' NBER Working Paper 30101 (2022), later in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Anchors the claim that she assembled the first continuous 1860 to 2020 series of the Black-white per-capita wealth ratio. Trust tier: primary.
  2. Princeton University, Department of Economics faculty page. Confirms her position as an economist and the focus of her research on the racial wealth gap and its mechanisms. Trust tier: secondary.

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Sources are graded A (primary) / B (secondary academic) / C (secondary journalism) / D (tertiary or contested). See the manifesto’s Evidence Standard for full criteria.

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File
ELLORA-DERENONCOURT
Thread
KEPT
Status
published
Published
2026-07-17

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On the wire
NEW ABANDONED COURTESY DIGITAL USER ACCOUNT REFUSE UNNECESSARY PREDICTIVE Ellora Derenoncourt Built the Line DESIGNATED SUBSTANTIAL AND EFFECTIVE COMPLIANCE ACTION PLAN POSTPONED RECARVED ROBESON Without a Word for It What Was Buried, Not Broken Money's A Loan Before It's A Thing NAMING MACHINE BLIGHT REDLINE CLEARANCE DENIED