There’s some new data out today from Brandeis University on the racial wealth gap in this country. It has tripled in the past 25 years. Whites getting richer, African-Americans not. The study’s ongoing — the same set of families, black and white; 25 years of research into total wealth, not just paychecks.
Tom Shapiro did the analysis, which points to housing as a huge factor, how where you live affects how much wealth you have.
“As homes are bought a little lower down in the socioeconomic ladder, housing wealth does grow,” Shapiro said. “But the point is it doesn’t grow nearly as much or as fast.”
When Shapiro first started the study in 1984, the total wealth gap between blacks and whites was $ 85,000. In 2009, that gap had tripled to $ 236,500.
“For a typical white family, a $ 1 increase in average income over the 25 years returns about $ 5 of wealth,” Shapiro said. “For that same typical African-American family — that same $ 1 average increase in income — returns only 69 cents in wealth…Part of the equation there is that that typical African-American family has less wealth to start out with than the typical white family.”
Shapiro said data show that the wealth in the African-American community has gone up tremendously over the past 25 years, but “we need to keep growing in a way that bring the African-American, or the communities of color, line closer — that is, put it on the same trajectory of growth and prosperity as that of the white wealth growth line.”
And if we don’t, Shapiro said, “I fear. I know what toxic inequality looks like. Shared economic prosperity needs to be spread much more broadly for the United States to compete globally as an economy.”
Wealth gap grows between black and white in U.S.
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