Elite Identity, Land Inequality, and Local Development: Evidencefrom Colonial Ireland

Abstract

Shifts in land ownership affect not only its concentration among individuals but, by changing the identity of the local economic elite, its distribution among groups. We study how the group identity of local elites shapes the supply of local public goods over time. Between 1652-9, a third of Ireland’s land was expropriated from Irish Catholic elites. Leveraging the lottery-based allocation of this land to different English Protestant recipients, we find significant and persistent local variation in the extent of land ultimately owned by Protestants. Drawing on rich local data spanning nearly two centuries, we find that public goods, such as schools and workhouses, became scarcer and more exclusionary in areas more intensively redistributed to the Protestant minority. Broader economic outcomes, however, show only muted differences. The results underscore how the distributive consequences of inequality between groups vary from those of inequality between individuals.