¹ Gallman, Robert E., “Professor Pessen on the ‘Egalitarian Myth,’” Social Science History, 2 (Winter 1978), 195.Google Scholar

² Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United Stares, 1850–1870 (New Haven, 1975).Google Scholar

³ Congress, U.S., “Data on the Distribution of Wealth in the United States,” Hearings Before the Task Force on the Distributive Impact of Budget and Economic Policies, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, D.C., 1977).Google Scholar

⁴ U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1870, vol. 2, pp. 552–58.Google Scholar

⁵ U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1970, vol. 1, pt. 1, section 1, pp. 269–96.Google Scholar

⁶ Pessen, Edward, Riches, Class and Power Before the Civil War (Lexington, MA, 1973).Google Scholar

⁷ Gailman, “Professor Pessen,” 194–207.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., 195.

⁹ Ibid., 198.

¹⁰ For a discussion of the sample, see Bateman, Fred and Foust, James D., “A Sample of Rural Households Selected from the 1860 Manuscript Censuses,” Agricultural History, 48 (01 1974), 75–93.Google Scholar

¹¹ As the zero wealth holders constitute a fairly large fraction of the sample, their treatment is particularly important. On the one hand, excluding them (the usual treatment in a log or semi-log model) excludes an important segment of the population and implicitly argues for a dichotomous model, but leaves no wealth variation to explain for one group. On the other hand, mimicking the behavior of the logarithmic function as wealth approaches zero by substituting a very large negative number gives undue weight to the group. Excluding the zero wealth holders results in much lower implicit accumulation rates, whereas substituting a large negative number results in much higher rates. The results reported here were derived setting the zero wealth to $I. The results are fairly insensitive over a fairly wide range of values.

¹² The only equations in which age was not the most important explanatory variable were those for blacks, illiterates, and immigrants. In each case, farm ownership dominated age, but age was the second most important variable.

¹³ For example, the interest rate quotations given in Macaulay, Frederick R., Some Theoretical Problems Suggested by the Movement of Interest Rates, Bond Yields and Stock Prices in the United States Since 1856, NBER (New York, 1938), are in the range of 6 to 8 percent;Google Scholar the manufacturing profit rates given by Bateman, Fred and Weiss, Thomas, A Deplorable Scarcity (Chapel Hill, forthcoming) are about 20 percent;Google Scholar and agricultural profit rates given by Bateman, Fred and Atack, Jeremy, “The Profitability of Northern Agriculture in 1860,” Research in Economic History, 4 (1978) 87–125, are about 10 percent. The accumulation rates implied by the regression coefficient of age could be a linear combination of these rates.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Data are for Massachusetts in 1855, averaged for men and women. See Sydenstricker, Edgar, Health and Environment (New York, 1933), p. 164.Google Scholar

¹⁵ No person or group, of course, experienced the life cycles depicted here. Rather, in the presence of widely diffused economic growth the decline in later years might be postponed indefinitely.

¹⁶ Gaffinan, “Professor Pessen,” 197.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The only pronounced deviations from this generalization were for women, where the average age was 49 and for nonfarm household heads whose average age was 39.

¹⁸ Bureau, U. S. of the Census, Census of the Population: 1970, vol. 1, Pt. 1, section 2, P. 649.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Paglin, Morton, “The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: A Basic Revision,” American Economic Review, 65 (09. 1975), 598–609.Google Scholar

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²¹ Atack, Jeremy and Bateman, Fred, “The Measurement and Trend of Inequality: An Amendment to Basic Revision,” Economic Letters, 4 (10. 1979), 389–93.Google Scholar See Also Formby, John P. and Seaks, Terry G., “Paglin's Gini Measure of Inequality: A Modification,” American Economic Review, 70 (06 1980), 479–82.Google Scholar

²² See especially American Economic Review, 67 (June 1977).Google Scholar

²³ Pessen, Edward, Riches, Class and Power.Google Scholar

²⁴ Galiman, Robert E., “Trends in the Size Distribution of Wealth in the Nineteenth Century: Some Speculations,” in Soltow, Lee, ed., Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income, NBER, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 33 (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

²⁵ wright, Gavin, “‘Economic Democracy’ and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850–60,” Agricultural History, 44 (01. 1970), 63–94.Google Scholar

²⁶ Campbell, Randolph B. and Lowe, Richard G., Wealth and Power in Antebellum Texas (College Station, TX, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁷ Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth.Google Scholar

²⁸ Soltow, Lee, Wealthholding in Wisconsin (Madison, 1971).Google Scholar