A new paper by Johan Fourie and Frank Garmon Jr published in The Economic History Review uses newly transcribed household-level tax censuses from the Dutch and British Cape Colony and the United States shortly after independence to show comparative levels of income and wealth over four decades both between the two regions and within them. Cape farmers were, on average, more affluent than their American counterparts. While crop output and livestock were more unequally distributed at the Cape, ownership of enslaved people in America was more unequal.

The paper is available here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ehr.13190