Weath Gap Widens Between Whites, Minorities

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Wealth gap widens between whites, minorities

HOPE YEN
From Associated Press
July 26, 2011 12:11 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The recession and uneven recovery have erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites on average with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics, according to an analysis of new Census data.

The analysis shows the racial and ethnic impact of the economic meltdown, which ravaged housing values and sent unemployment soaring. It offers the most direct government evidence yet of the disparity between predominantly younger minorities whose main asset is their home and older whites who are more likely to have 401(k) retirement accounts or other stock holdings.

- snip-

The median wealth of white U.S. households in 2009 was $113,149, compared with $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks, according to the analysis released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. Those ratios, roughly 20 to 1 for blacks and 18 to 1 for Hispanics, far exceed the low mark of 7 to 1 for both groups reached in 1995, when the nation's economic expansion lifted many low-income groups to the middle class.

The white-black wealth gap is also the widest since the census began tracking such data in 1984, when the ratio was roughly 12 to 1.


Read more: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110725/5ffd9a53-e2a9-4dc6-9420-5ef1aa838394

[AnneD]

1. Which group of whites are they talking about....

Certainly not anyone I know, we're broke or unemployed around here.

[ChrisBorg]

2. Newly poor whites keep their property wealth.

Tv, audio, tech and all.


They are now renting with great amenities.

[noiretextatique]

stats are based on median income

simply put...there are more white people with money, so that tends to skew that stats. it certainly does not mean that there aren't a lot of poor white people.

[noiretextatique]

41. stats are based on median income

simply put...there are more white people with money, so that tends to skew that stats. it certainly does not mean that there aren't a lot of poor white people.

[Downwinder]

3. If you are basing it on property values, they are pretty fluid around here.

[tanyev]

4. GOP: Mission Accomplished

[Township75]

5. Well, Obama is doing much better, and GWB is not.

.

[alp227]

6. Wealth gap widens between whites, minorities, report says

Source: The Washington Post

The wealth gap between whites and minorities has risen to a historic high, according to new census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, as the collapse of housing prices more severely affected the net worth of African American and Hispanic households.

The report, which was to be released Tuesday, shows that the recession wreaked havoc on the wealth of all Americans but that whites lost the least amount as a percentage of their holdings.

Between 2005 and 2009, the median net worth of Hispanic households dropped by 66 percent and that of black households fell by 53 percent, according to the report. In contrast, the median net worth of white households dropped by only 16 percent.

The median net worth of a white family now stands at 20 times that of a black family and 18 times that of a Hispanic family — roughly twice the gap that existed before the recession and the biggest gap since data began being collected in 1984.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wealth-gap-widens-between-whites-minorities-report-says/2011/07/25/gIQAjeftZI_story.html

[Proletariatprincess]

7. I knew it was bad but...

these stats are astoundingly bad. I am appalled and shocked.
The USA is in much worse off than I thought...and I am a cynic. This is terrible news and deserves a lot more attention.

[Yupster]

56. I had the same reaction princess

Even the 100,000 for whites seems horribly low.

It sounds like America is no longer a rich country.

[dkf]

8. A median net worth of $5600 and $6300?

Are they not counting retirement accounts? Even $113,000 and $78,000 isn't adequate if they are.

[rucky]

16. Their home equity was their retirement account. n/t

[boppers]

17. "retirement accounts"? You're funny. Or incredibly insulting.

People living on beans and rice don't have "retirement accounts".

They have "checking", and if they're really, really, wealthy, a "savings" account.

The bottom 25% of households make less than $25,000 a year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States

That's just over $2,000 *a month*.(Can you live on that? With a family?)

If they saved $100 a month to "retire on", $113,000 would take them 113 years... before they could retire.

"Let them eat cake" comes to mind.

[Number23]

9. But it's not race, it's CLASSOne!one1!1

:eyes:

This is the most depressing (if unsurprising) thing I've read all day.

[MellowDem]

34. Actually, it is economics...

for the most part. In absolute terms, white's wealth has decreased more than hispanic and black wealth has. It's just that hispanics and blacks had so little wealth to begin with that any drop is massive percentage wise. The reason for the drop across the board is because of the recession. So, the increased wealth disparity percentage wise is really just simple economics, and the poor have suffered more in this recession.

As for the wealth disparity before the recession, which is the real issue, economic mobility in the US is incredibly low. And blacks and hispanics are already at the end of the rung thanks to history and some other factors as well, like having many first generation immigrants from already poor backgrounds. But it is economic policy of the last couple decades that keeps economic mobility low, and therefore keeps blacks and hispanics having little wealth and being disproprotionally in poverty, but it targets all the poor, not just minorities. That's why Asians, with their history and advantages, still do relatively well.

Anytime there is a recession in an economy that has overwhelmingly favored the rich, the poor will suffer the most, and in the US, that means blacks and hispanics will suffer disproportionally.

[Number23]

35. It is RACE.

You didn't even read the article.

the wealth of Hispanics — who derived nearly two-thirds of their net worth from home equity — declined by 66 percent by 2009. Among blacks, who now have the highest unemployment rate at 16.2 percent, their household wealth fell 53 percent from $12,124 to $5,677.

In contrast, the median household wealth of whites dipped a modest 16 percent from $134,992 to $113,149, cushioned in part by a stock market recovery that began in mid-2009.

Please spare me this tired conversation of how it's not race, it's class -- a perception that only white people ever seem to have. The issue is race. The article notes it. The whole damn world notes it. If this is something you are not comfortable accepting and acknowledging, I can't help you with that. But I'm begging you to please spare me (and yourself) this tired conversation. I'm not interested in having it.

[noiretextatique]

42. actually...it is both RACE and CLASS

because the measure is median income. i can understand why struggling and poor white people might have a problem with statistic because it is based on median income. simply put...there are more bill gates than jay-zs, which tends to skew the median for white people. which also explains why the bush tax cuts increased the wealth of the top 10 percent, who are also mostly white.

nice to see you :hi:

[Number23]

46. Nice to see you too!

And I agree, that it is most definitely both race AND class. But there is no denying the impact that race has had on the class structure in America in the first place.

:hi: (As you can see my donor star is dead and gone,never to be seen again. So I won't be posting in AAIG anymore. That's the only thing I'll regret about not donating)

[MellowDem]

45. What an odd response...

I don't exactly know what you were trying to say. If you read my response, you'd see I acknowledged that white's income dropped more in absolute terms while black's and hispanic's dropped more percentage-wise. So why you chose to quote that, I do not know?

As far as I can tell you didn't even read my response.

Your response is essentially "you're white, so of course you think this way, I won't even bother to discuss this issue with anyone who thinks differently from me, especially stubborn whites" Sorry if this isn't exactly it, but your response was so rude and asinine I can only imagine it is something along those lines.

I never said it was class by the way, rather, simple economics as to why the disparity was impacted by the recession the way it was, which, actually, mostly has to do with who is poor and rich. As for the wealth disparity itself, which I think is what you are getting at, that is a very complicated issue, with race certainly one of the issues, but not the only, and arguably not even the largest for continued wealth disparity.

Have a nice day!

:smoke:

[indurancevile]

47. blacks were targeted by the bush admin during the real estate bubble.

blacks specifically & the near-poor generally.

[MellowDem]

58. The most vulnerable and least informed were targeted...

how much of blacks being targeted was intentional due to their race is hard to tell, but working as a foreclosure counselor, I can tell you that predatory lending went after the poor in general, with blacks being disproportionally a part of that group.

I don't know if the Bush admin was targeting them as much as the policies he followed allow banks and shady companies to prey on the poor like never before. Even some well meaning liberals pushed policies that made it easier to lend to the poor and encouraged some the crazy lending practices.

If it really was all about white racism, I don't know why Hispanics and Asians would not have been targeted to the same extent as well, not to mention Arabs etc, and whites would not have been targeted at all, but I've worked with plenty of whites who were targeted by predatory lending.

Which is to say that the explanation for wealth disparity in the US can't all be easily explained by racism, especially the continued wealth disparity. That would assume that without racism, blacks and hispanics et al. would all magically rise to the same level as whites. But it's pretty apparant that poor people rarely get out of their economic group in the US. It's why whites who are poor have so little chance of going from poor to middle class. In other words, racism doesn't help minorities, but the biggest factor by far is the lack of economic mobility and equal opportunities between classes.

Money trumps race, as has been shown time and time again. Race matters, but money matters more. The biggest determinant of how far you go is how much money and wealth you are born into.

I am not saying that race should be ignored. It definitely is a factor, and fighting bigotry will have to continue for a while with education. But the biggest obstacle to racial economic equality is the lack of economic mobility in the US and the stacked deck money gives the rich compared to the poor. Like i have said, it is a big reason why Asians do so well relative to other minorities. And sadly enough, our ideas of class contribute to racial steryotypes, hence Asians being thought of as "good at Math" while blacks are portrayed as lazy, all because of how much money each race disproportionally has. And poor whites are "white trash" that can't make good even with their white skin. It's a vicious cycle, with class and race steryotypes feeding on each other. Really, the idea that the US is somehow a perfect meritocracy where everyone is in their deserved place is the biggest obstacle of all, and feeds racial steryotypes.

[indurancevile]

59. bush made a speech about it. how they were going to increase the rate of black

homeownership.

they were targeted.

[Mimosa]

10. This explains a LOT.

Everybody has lost net worth since the 1980s. Most of us are poorer. But blacks -who aren't usually immigrants- are getting shafted. This explains a lot of hostility in urban areas especially.

Before the 1980s people used to be able to get steady jobs which paid the rent, even let people support small families. There were factories which MADE THINGS.

[melm00se]

11. how do you fix that? n/t

[CreekDog]

12. redistribution of wealth --all the good countries are already doing it

heck, even we are, just not as much as before, and we never were doing it as much as the countries that take better care of their people.

[melm00se]

14. redistribution of wealth

really only impacts income of the recipient and it doesn't address what the recipient does with that income.

Acquiring wealth and growing it is an active process and, for most people, a challenging one and people don't like the hard way, they prefer the easy way hence why the wealth numbers are fairly low.

[CreekDog]

15. why does it work in other countries?

you keep acting like we're the only capitalist nation on earth.

[boppers]

18. Well, there's Somalia.

Ultimate capitalism, there.

Total freedom land for Randian experiments.

Every other developed nation has realized that capitalism is stupid and destructive to society, and must be tightly controlled and/or regulated.

Most of the arguments are about levels of regulation.

[Igel]

25. Oddly, it doesn't.

As the other countries have become more diverse equality's broken down. Most of the countries with really low inequality coefficients are either fairly culturally homogeneous or their low inequality coefficients are meaningless.

For example, some African countries are fairly "equal," mostly because the number of wealthy is very small and the wealthy may be fabulously wealthy in local terms but still not *that* wealthy. If everybody's impoverished except some few, then the average is pretty low.

The countries with wealth redistribution are functioning liberal democracies, and not popular dictatorships. In other words, there's enough social cohesion and intercommunity bonding that even the wealthy favored a lo5 lot of the redistributionist policies. The US has much less social cohesion and, in fact, in many of the "utopian" countries social cohesion's faltered and, with it, so too have the redistributionist policies. A dirty secret is that by and large cultural homogeneity and social cohesion go hand in hand. I'm on the job market, and I've been told that the administrators that interview me want to see themselves in me, supporting their policies and having traits that make us compatible. The more I'm not-them the fewer callbacks I get. (So at least I know the problem.)

Note that "capitalist" is not the important term here.

[CreekDog]

29. it does work in wealthy nations with the highest standards of living

Germany, France, Japan, etc.

those countries take care of their people through redistribution via taxes and benefit programs as well as universal healthcare and free or heavily subsidized education and child care.

but you want to compare us to low standard of living countries in the third world --as if that's apt.

[joeglow3]

37. Those countries are rather homogeneous

Thus, you seem to be supporting his/her claim.

[CreekDog]

38. Germany is not all that homogenous

Neither is the UK

France not so much either.

And besides, the programs aren't successful because of any homogeneity or lack thereof any more than ours are or are not successful for the same reasons.

Their programs are simply more substantial than ours and their effect on those societies is greater because of that and they have lower effects of poverty and other socioeconomic problems than we do.

[indurancevile]

49. respectfully, that is pernicious crap. a pseudo-correlation posing as cause & effect.

correlation is not causation.

[CreekDog]

36. i think it's pointless to argue with someone who thinks Social Security is insolvent

that there's good reason not to hire the unemployed.

that defends BP for their recent Alaska oil spill.

etc.

because we're not going to get anywhere because we don't share any common political philosophy.

:shrug:

[indurancevile]

48. oh baloney. the few periods in which there was "redistribution of wealth" in the us it worked just

fine.

[hack89]

20. How exactly do you redistribute wealth?

how, for example, does Sweden or Norway do it? (Those are two countries I would love America to be like)

[No Elephants]

21. Taxation and spending. The U.S. redistributes wealth all the time.

[Igel]

26. They don't need to.

There's a certain embarrassment in some cultures at being too much more wealthy than those you consider to be your peers. If you're wealthy, you're not going to flaunt it as much. This reduces the motivation to alter things to direct massive amounts of wealth your own way, and a greater willingness to have the government encourage more equal income patterns.

In order to be like Sweden and Norway, America would have to alter some cultural traits and have far greater social cohesion. We tend to want the effects without the causes.

[hack89]

28. 1 in 200 Swedes are millionaires

http://www.thelocal.se/27394/20100622/

http://www.swedishwire.com/economy/5099-number-of-millionaires-booms-in-sweden

sounds like a good system to me.

[CreekDog]

32. yes like those countries do it

It's not necessarily the stated goal but through progressive taxation and generous social programs, they accomplish a great deal in terms of equality, not just in terms of money but also by ensuring a minimum level of services to every person - and far beyond what our country does for its own.

[Igel]

23. Short term, you don't.

Long term, it's possible, but it means providing not so much each opportunity as roughly equal chances to make use of opportunity.

My parents' generation was rather wealthy. They saved money. Their assets appreciated over time. Many of them were able to take the assets their parents had and save them, invest them. In many cases the greatest asset was a decent education or helping the kids get a good, steady job with a stable home life and an attitude that provided optimism for starting ventures or taking reasoned risks.

They were also lucky, in that their assets pretty much only appreciated--and since they didn't spend them, they could let them ride. My generation is having problems not buying the latest tech, spending down their capital for short-term pleasure.

Take the college attendance rate. In every generation of whites until recently some kids got better educations than their parents. Parents dropped out of high school? Kids finished high school. Parents went to high school? Kids went to college. But if your parents went to college, you were very, very likely to go to college as well. So the college attendance rate built up over time, even if things like the GI Bill really led to an upsurge. If you're in a community with a 3-5% college attendance rate it's hard to suddenly bump that up to 40%.

Generations of new immigrants tended to get with the program. Even if poor, their kids did better, and their grandkids did even better. Over a few generations the improvement rate in income and assets was a bit higher so they "caught up." Even brown skin didn't so much matter. Of course, in recent years they typically started out with a college education or quickly go on the college "train." Chinese and Japanese did well. Even Africans in the US did well, barely distinguishable statistically from whites or Japanese.


Even now, in a lot of white communities the college attendance rate's low and hasn't been increasing. There's something going on there, too, that needs help. The latest generation of Latinos seem to be bifurcating, some assimilating economically and educationally and others flatlining. And the African-American community's woes are much discussed and seldom solved. But in every other case, it's taken a few generations; we're impatient now and want it by noon tomorrow.

[noiretextatique]

the current problems with african-americans are also generational

take the reparations debate, for example. it never could be taken seriously when it should have because african-americans did not have the social or political power to make it a serious issue. in terms of wealth, incidents such as tulsa and rosewood were far more common than people know, i.e., wealth was stolen from african-americans, e.g. property, and they had no redress via the legal system. even now,
the living victims of the tulsa riots cannot get reimbursed for their losses. add to that discrimination in hiring, education, etc...the doctrine of white supremacy is a factor in the whys of generational wealth.

[noiretextatique]

43. the current problems with african-americans are also generational

take the reparations debate, for example. it never could be taken seriously when it should have because african-americans did not have the social or political power to make it a serious issue. in terms of wealth, incidents such as tulsa and rosewood were far more common than people know, i.e., wealth was stolen from african-americans, e.g. property, and they had no redress via the legal system. even now,
the living victims of the tulsa riots cannot get reimbursed for their losses. add to that discrimination in hiring, education, etc...the doctrine of white supremacy is a factor in the whys of generational wealth.

[millych3]

13. This is terrible news indeed

[lunatica]

19. These statistics are shameful

That Americans are suffering is really criminal. I don't care what color or race or gender or sexual orientation Americans are. It's a fucking crime that any are suffering because of who and what they are in this country.

[daleo]

53. It sounds like a race to the bottom

Everyone is going down, some faster than others. Pretty disastrous every way you look at it.

[bemildred]

22. How about just "Wealth gap Widens"?

Poverty is not about anybody with no money.

[karynnj]

27. Here is the paragraph that provides numbers for what you said

A"cross all race and ethnic groups, the wealth gap between rich and poor widened. The share of wealth held by the top 10 percent of U.S. households increased from 49 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2009. The threshold for entry into the wealthiest top 10 percent, however, dipped lower: from $646,327 in 2005 to $598,435."

Imagine how fast the 56% could increase under the Ryan budget that has no estate or capital gains taxes.

It is amazing that in JUST 5 YEARS the percent of wealth that the top 10% have has grown from 49% of the total to 56%. It would be interesting if they had the estimates for earlier points in time.

[noiretextatique]

44. bingo! race is still an issue

and a huge one. however, the results of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 10% is a big reason why the disparities are so glaringly. the figures for the median incomes of whites includes a lot more of that wealthiest 10% than it does for blacks and latinos.

[indurancevile]

55. that is interesting that the threshhold for the top 10% dropped while the total concentration

of wealth held by the top 10% went up.

seems to me that speaks of more concentration at the very top with a trailing tail.

[karynnj]

24. I am shocked that the medians are so far apart

These numbers are appalling.

Reading the entire link is worthwhile. Nothing is more eye opening than those top line numbers, but the explanations are very interesting.

[TexDevilDog]

30. Why are Asians doing so well versus other minorities?

They are one of the smallest minorities but are ahead of other culture groups.

[butterfly77]

31. Because they are white?

[TexDevilDog]

33. Oh, I forgot skin color determines economic ability

.

[noiretextatique]

40. yes...according to the statistics

but you can believe otherwise.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

39. Since when?

[indurancevile]

50. Because they immigrated with more capital to begin with. Same reason Caribbean blacks

are (on average) "ahead of" native born.

[U4ikLefty]

51. BINGO!!!

[Starry Messenger]

60. +1

Plus there is a big dif between immigrating and being kidnapped and imported like chattel.

[indurancevile]

61. yes. not to mention 300 years of institutionalized discrimination a/o outright

slavery. there is no comparison to the black experience in the us.

[LeftyMom]

54. Which Asians?

There are some significant differences within ethnic groups, for example Hmong tend to have lower educational levels and much higher poverty rates compared to other southeast Asians. Some groups emphasize education and high status jobs for women, others push for early (and often arranged) marriage and childbearing, some groups push their kids to get as much schooling as they can while others emphasize hard work and family businesses. Lumping Asians together is stupid, really: all those different ethnic groups and nationalities led to different reasons for immigrating to different places at different times and different behaviors once they arrived.

[Downwinder]

52. As usual I'm bucking the trend. I've pretty well stabilized at zero assets.

At least I'm not under water.

[entanglement]

57. I knew there was a gap but this is a freaking CHASM.

[DeadEyeDyck]

62. Being exactly half and half

I am not sure if I am a winner or loser. My mum is a very white German American and my pop is very black.

Actually, I am having some fun as I always do with these kinds of silly surveys. In truth, our family has done well. My dad retired from the USA as a WO4 and makes very good money in personal security. My mum teaches at university and I just finished my doctoral and believe I will have a position in the state department soon. I don’t think it is skin color that holds people back but their unwillingness to transcend their culture. You DO have a choice to go beyond your skin colour. You can choose to identify with any attribute you prefer. It may be hard, but the choice is yours.