The Legacies of Slavery in and out of Africa

The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration
experiences in history. In this paper I illustrate their long-term consequences on
contemporaneous socio-economic outcomes, drawing from my own previous work on
the topic and from an extensive review of the available literature. I first consider the
influence of the slave trade on the “sending” countries in Africa, with attention to their
economic, institutional, demographic, and social implications. Next I evaluate the
consequences of the slave trade on the “receiving” countries in the Americas. Here I
distinguish between the case of Latin America and that of the United States. Overall, I
show that the slave trades exert a lasting impact along several contemporaneous socioeconomic dimensions and across diverse areas of the world.