*A new groundbreaking report has just been released that looks closely at the racial wealth gap, and how it is being impacted by the rise of the super-rich. It was created by the Institute for Policy Studies, and is titled “Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide.” The report looks closely at the low levels of black wealth and how that level is only shrinking under new policy. View Full Report Here
The report relies on the Federal Reserve Surveys which measure wealth in terms of net worth the sum of all assets, including the market value of real estate, minus all liabilities.
Note: Look for a detailed discussion on Attorney Antonio Moore’s show Friday 1.18.19 7pm pst on Dash Radio Tonetalks also live on Youtube, where Moore and report author Chuck Collins will detail findings and what the results mean for Black America.
Key Findings:
- The median Black family today owns $3,600— just 2 percent of the wealth of the $147,000 the median White family owns. The median Latino family has assets worth $6,600 — just 4 percent as much as the median White family. In other words, the median White family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family.
- If the trajectory of the past three decades continues, by 2050, median White wealth will be $174,000, while Latino wealth will be $8,600 and Black median wealth will be $600. Based on the 1983 to 2016 trajectory, the median Black family is on track to reach zero wealth by 2082.
- The proportion of all U.S. households with zero or “negative” wealth, meaning their debts exceed the value of their assets, has grown from 1 in 6 in 1983 to 1 in 5 households in 2016. Families of color are much likelier to be in this precarious financial situation. Thirty-seven percent of Black families and 33 percent of Latino families have zero or negative wealth, compared to just 15.5 percent of White families. One piece of good news: the proportion of Latino families with zero or negative net worth declined between 1983 and 2016, from 40 percent to 33 percent.
- The widening of the racial wealth divide has coincided with the extreme concentration of U.S. wealth. The Forbes 400 richest Americans own more wealth than the entire Black population plus a quarter of the Latino population combined.
- Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owns $160 billion in total wealth. That is 44 million times more wealth than the median Black family, and 24 million times more wealth than a Latino family.
Authors: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie Sabrina Terry
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