Black Baby Boomers' Income Gap Cited

[Rose Siding]

Forty years after the end of the baby boom, black Americans born between 1946 and 1964 "are no better off relative to whites than their parents and grandparents" were in terms of income, according to a new Duke University study.

Black baby boomers are still earning about 66 percent of what their non-Hispanic white age peers earn, Duke sociology professors Angela M. O'Rand and Mary Elizabeth Hughes wrote in "The Lives and Times of the Baby Boomers," which was released Wednesday. That is about equal to the income earned by foreign-born Hispanics, O'Rand and Hughes said.

Black baby boomers did not close the income gap, even though they were the first generation to come of age after the civil rights era, the researchers said.

"African Americans have made their way more into the middle class than before," Hughes said in an interview. "But when you look across the board, you don't see the type of equality Americans would like to see. It suggests there are very deep root causes here, not one-answer causes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5932-2004Dec16.html

[aikido15]

1. Well...

that sucks! Women probably haven't made much more progress than blacks...also, and the poor are getting poorer...etc.. *sigh*

I want a better world...:cry:

[Erika]

2. Yes, Blacks and Women

still do not earn the wages of white men. Just waiting as to see the prejudiced reasons as to why not. Some people don't face reality.

[Barkley]

3. Race oppression is rooted in economics

Race is still a key ingredient used to allocate health, education, employment, housing, security, incarceration, etc in the United States.

Making discrimination illegal only makes certain acts if detected, against the law; it doesn't end them. Passing laws against employment discrimination helped blacks; the size of the black middle class doubled in the decade of the 1960s.

Anti discrimination laws also helped corporate America aquire a more efficient labor force by widening the labor pool to include all eligible people.

However, anti discrimination laws don't/ can't address the racial allocation issue, hence the result of this study.

Thanks so much Rose for posting this information.

[mhr]

4. Unemployed 54 Months, I Have Little Sympathy

eom

[gottaB]

5. Here's your one cause: Republicans

The only real progress on closing the income gap was made during the Clinton Presidency. That trend has reversed under Bush.

http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/new/html/Tue_Oct_3_114000_2000.html

[Deja Q]

7. WHAT? That can not be true.

I've got a truckload of graphs, given to me by AFSCME, which have shown a steady 24 year increase in the gulf between workers' wages and executive wages (a consistent increase from 40x to >620x during 20-some years with no 8 year reprieve. If there was any drop, it's because of *'s "handling" of the economy.)

And as people have been working more and more and getting more stressed and stressed during the same time and not getting extra pay in the process (it is known that, adjusted for inflation, our wages are akin to those of 1973), that adds to the gulf.

http://www.faireconomy.org/econ/workshops/growing_divide.html is one of them though you'll have send them your personal info. I didn't sign up, but the title is identical. And I assume that their info hasn't changed or maliciously altered since December 2003 when I got my packet.

More info: http://www.faireconomy.org/research/index.html

I just read the Clinton article and gave up in disgust after 3 paragrapghs. It's nothing but lots of spin made by a known centrist and repuke enabler who dribbled on NAFTA. Sorry. He's throwing about a bunch of numbers to make you think you're doing better when many other charts of the last 23-33 years rather show who is TRULY benefitting. (indeed. How little would it take for the richest 5% to eliminate poverty entirely in America by giving a better wage to the working poor? Clinton nor the wealthy ever did that. They never really have.)

[gottaB]

8. I was refering to the income gap between black and white households

Yes, CEO compensation has been soaring, and that's constant. Nevertheless under Clinton median incomes rose substantially, rates of poverty fell, and the gap between median African American incomes and median white incomes narrowed.

The census bureau has truckloads of graphs and tables that anybody can access, including the highly relevant "Historical Tables on Income Inequality."

[Laughing Mirror]

6. That explains it

I was born smack in the middle of the baby boom and I've always wondered why my white gay peers were moving into historic Logan Circle and Greenwich Village townhouses they were buying while I was still scraping along on low salaries in dim cockroach studio apartments. Now I know why. "You have no sense of investment whatsoever," they'd tell me. "You're a fool if you don't invest."

Of course, when you have nothing to invest it is hard to develop a sense for what investment is. The only investment you ever pay in to is social security. Now we know that that fund won't be there in 15 years, I see my white gay brethren were right. I was a fool, but what can could you do when you are not one of them.

It's good Duke University has done a study of this. I wonder how biased it is. Is it because today's dollar is so reliably unstable that the study uses 1989 dollars to show how much white non-Hispanic early boomers earned? That's a pretty telling detail to me.