Give Black Households More Economic Power
Black families are experiencing centuries’ worth of negative compounding
As protests continue across America following the murder of George Floyd, race relations have become fraught and taken center stage in the United States. Though there is a lot of focus on the systemic social inequalities occurring in the U.S., we should also take a deeper look at the economic inequalities as well.
Because it is my belief that many of the social issues experienced by people of color throughout America would be greatly mitigated if they had more economic power. Before we get to that discussion, let’s examine the size of the racial wealth gap to see where things stand currently.
How big is the racial wealth gap?
To figure out just how stark wealth inequality is by race, I will be using the net worth data provided by the Survey of Consumer Finances (“SCF”). As a quick refresher, net worth is defined as:
Net Worth = Assets - Liabilities
Where assets are everything that you own (i.e. house, car, bank accounts, securities, rental properties, etc.) while liabilities are everything that you owe to others (i.e. credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage, etc.)
