Understanding the racial wealth gap
A recent report from Demos, a liberal public policy research organization, and the Institute for Assets & Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis shows that black and brown households lag significantly behind white ones in household wealth, one of the most important indicators of financial success. According to The Asset Value of Whiteness, in 2013 the median white household had $13 in net wealth for every dollar held by the median black household and $10 for each dollar held by the median Latinx household. The same report convincingly showed that the interventions we typically think of corrective for struggling households aren’t helping black and brown ones: College education, full-time employment, two-parent households and better financial planning are not closing the gap.
