Ellora Derenoncourt and Her Co-Authors Built the Line

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. It had been studied closely in recent decades and in pieces for the years after Emancipation, but for about a hundred years, from the 1880s to the 1980s, there was no continuous national series. Ellora Derenoncourt and her co-authors built the line.

An economist at Princeton, Derenoncourt worked with Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn and Moritz Schularick to assemble what they call the first continuous series of white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios, running from 1860 to 2020. A hundred and sixty years, drawn from the census, early state tax records, the Survey of Consumer Finances and the other fragments the record left behind. Before it, in the paper’s own words, “much less is known about the evolution of the wealth gap over the full post-Emancipation period.”

The team put those records in one line, so the next argument could start from one continuous record, and published the data for anyone to use.

That is why she belongs here. Not because she is famous. Because the series she and her co-authors built is a receipt anyone can check.

Correction

Corrected 2026-09-29. This profile published on July 17, 2026. Two errors, and two sentences the docket did not support, are named here rather than quietly repaired.

One author was credited with four authors’ work. The profile was titled “Ellora Derenoncourt Built the Line.” The title and the opening said Ellora Derenoncourt built the line, the excerpt said “She built it,” and the close said “she built the receipts the rest of us cite.” The body mentioned “her collaborators” once, without naming them. The paper behind it, “Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860–2020,” has four authors: Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn and Moritz Schularick. The title, excerpt, subtitle, opening and close now name the team.

The gap had been measured in pieces. This profile said the gap was “felt in every direction and measured in almost none.” It also said: “The record most needed was the one nobody had kept.” The paper says there is “a large literature on the contemporary racial wealth gap,” and it built its series from records that were kept: the census, early state tax records, the Survey of Consumer Finances and others. What it added was a continuous national series, filling “about 100 years of missing data on the national racial wealth gap, from the 1880s to the 1980s.” The profile now says that. The series is the contribution, and it stands.

Two sentences the docket did not support are cut. “The pattern in her work is steady.” and “She kept it.” The phrase “first continuous series” is now attributed to the authors, and the profile now says the authors published their data, which the paper states.

Sources: Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, Moritz Kuhn and Moritz Schularick, “Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860–2020,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 139, no. 2 (2024): 693–750; first circulated as NBER Working Paper 30101 (2022), the version quoted here. Read on September 29, 2026.

Corrected 2026-10-17. This profile published on July 17, 2026. One phrase kept a frame the correction of September 29 retired, named here rather than quietly repaired. That correction found the gap had been measured in pieces before this series, and cut the profile’s claim that it was “measured in almost none.” The paragraph on the published data still said the team built the line “so the next argument could start from evidence instead of feeling,” which reads as if there had been no evidence before. There was. What the series added, in the paper’s account, was one continuous national record from 1860 to 2020. The sentence now reads “so the next argument could start from one continuous record.”

Source: 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). Read on October 17, 2026.

Update

Updated 2026-09-30. This profile published on July 17, 2026, and what follows happened after. It is not a correction. On September 29, 2026, the MacArthur Foundation named Derenoncourt a 2026 MacArthur Fellow. The Foundation’s page says, “She is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at Princeton University,” and credits “Derenoncourt and co-authors” with creating “the first continuous record of the racial wealth gap from the U.S. Civil War to 2020.”

Source: MacArthur Foundation, “Ellora Derenoncourt,” Class of 2026 fellow page, published September 29, 2026. Read in full on September 29, 2026.