Wealth By Race And Age

In the comments of my previous post on wealth and race, Tom Maguire asked if I could find “means and medians for income and wealth further sorted by age.” Well, I tried, but I was able to find only incomplete answers to his question.

This graph, from a year-old Russel Sage study (pdf file here – the data is in 1998 dollars), answers Tom’s question for net worth but not income. Don’t let that high top line distract you; what really matters, in my opinion, is how huge the disparity between the purple (median net worth for blacks and Hispanics) and the orange (median net worth for whites) lines are. Whatever you think of the possible solutions, the fact is we are nowhere close to real racial equality in this country.

There’s also this table, containing data from Oliver & Shapiro’s book Black Wealth, White Wealth; however, the data has limitations (no Hispanic category, from 1988, medians are given only for net financial assets), plus due to differing definitions and source it’s not directly comparable to the other data I’ve presented. Still, what the heck, it’s only a blog.

Diana made a similar request, commenting that “When you have a lot of kids, there’s lot of spending and little earning going on!” Well, part of the point of looking at wealth is to notice that wealth is not determined just by earnings (more on that in my previous post). Still, Diana’s question is a fair one. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any data handy for race and wealth by number of children. I did find something pretty close in Black Wealth/White Wealth, however, which is household wealth by number of earners:

Oh, and I should define what the heck “net financial assets” means. From Oliver and Shapiro:

Net financial assets, by contrast, are those financial assets normally available for present or future conversion into ready cash. The specific difference between net worth and net financial assets is that equity in vehicles and homes is excluded from the latter, although debts are subtracted from NFA. In contrast to net worth, net financial assets consists fo more readily liquid sources of income and wealth that can be used for a family’s immediate well-being. Because the distinction between net worth and net financial assets is somewhat controversial and still open to debate, we usually present both measures. Generally, in our view, however, net financial assets seem to be the best indicator of the current generation’s command over future resources, while net worth provides a more accurate estimate of the wealthy likely to be inherited by the next generation.

Anyhow, that’s what I found, Tom and Diana… Never let it be said that I don’t listen to reader requests.

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