{"id":31,"date":"2003-01-28T09:35:30","date_gmt":"2003-01-28T17:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/01\/28\/race-and-the-wealth-gap\/"},"modified":"2003-01-28T09:35:30","modified_gmt":"2003-01-28T17:35:30","slug":"race-and-the-wealth-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=31","title":{"rendered":"Race and the Wealth Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Barlow<\/a> and Rob Lyman<\/a> have been reminding folks of the importance of looking at race\/wealth disparities, as well as the better-known income disparities. People are often surprised at just how huge the wealth gap is compared to the income gap.<\/p>\n

Wanna see what I mean? In the following table, “net worth” refers to is the product of total assets minus total liabilities (I’ll provide a more detailed definition in the comments). As you can see, white households have about twice the income of non-white households, but eight times the wealth of black families and twenty-five times<\/em> the wealth of Hispanic families<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Race and various measures of monetary well-being, 1998.<\/strong>
(Source: Wolff, tables 7 & 8)<\/a><\/em><\/caption>\n
<\/th>\n Whites <\/th>\n Blacks <\/th>\n b\/w Ratio <\/th>\n Hispanics<\/th>\n h\/w ratio <\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Median Income
(thousands)<\/td>\n		37<\/td>\n20<\/td>\n0.54<\/td>\n23<\/td>\n0.62<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Average Income
(thousands)<\/td>\n		57.8<\/td>\n28.4<\/td>\n0.49<\/td>\n31.1<\/td>\n0.54<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Median Net
Worth (thousands)<\/td>\n		81.7<\/td>\n10<\/td>\n0.12<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n0.04<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Average Net
Worth (thousands)<\/td>\n		320.9<\/td>\n58.3<\/td>\n0.18<\/td>\n79.2<\/td>\n0.25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Homeownership
rate<\/td>\n		71.8%<\/td>\n46.3%<\/td>\n0.67<\/td>\n44.2%<\/td>\n0.64<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
% of households
with zero or
negative net worth<\/td>\n		14.8%<\/td>\n27.4%<\/td>\n2.09<\/td>\n36.2%<\/td>\n2.56<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

It’s also worth noticing that there are even big wealth gaps within the same income class; a poor (measured by income) white household is likely to have much more wealth than a poor black household. There has been a lot of talk about the emergence of a black middle class in the last few decades; important as that is, we should bear in mind that the black middle class is incredibly tiny if we measure class by wealth instead of income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Race, income, and net worth for non-hispanic whites and non-hispanic blacks, 1998.<\/strong>
(Source: Wolff, table 9)<\/a><\/em><\/caption>\n
Income
class<\/th>\n		percent
of whites<\/th>\n		percent
of blacks<\/th>\n		white average
net worth<\/th>\n		black average
net worth<\/th>\n		 ratio <\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Under
$15,000<\/td>\n		17.6%<\/td>\n40.9%<\/td>\n$63,836<\/td>\n$16,152<\/td>\n0.25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
$15,000-
$24,999<\/td>\n		15.2%<\/td>\n16.9%<\/td>\n$108,696<\/td>\n$31,913<\/td>\n0.29<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
$25,000-
$49,999<\/td>\n		29.5%<\/td>\n24.8%<\/td>\n$136,455<\/td>\n$62,635<\/td>\n0.46<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
$50,000-
$74,999<\/td>\n		19.3%<\/td>\n11.1%<\/td>\n$24,5647<\/td>\n$96,645<\/td>\n0.39<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
$75,000
and over<\/td>\n		18.4%<\/td>\n6.2%<\/td>\n$1,119,335<\/td>\n$320,223<\/td>\n0.29<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Importantly, wealth more than income is what determines our ability to help our kids out – for instance, by helping them buy a first home. Wealth – or lack of wealth – tends to be passed down from generation to generation.<\/p>\n

(There’s also a follow-up post<\/a>, with data on wealth by race and age.).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Barlow and Rob Lyman have been reminding folks of the importance of looking at race\/wealth disparities, as well as the better-known income disparities. People are often surprised at just how huge the wealth gap is compared to the income … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,25,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-poverty-labor-related-issues","category-economics-and-the-like","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}