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5 Alarming Facts About the Racial Wealth Gap
http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-alarming-facts-about-racial-wealth-gap
***SNIP
1. Eighty percent of black and Latino households have a net wealth less than the white median of $111,740. In addition, when net wealth is separated by income levels, blacks and Latinos still have only a fraction of whites’ median wealth. To look at it another way, whites have a median net worth 15 times that of blacks and 13 times that of Latinos.
2. Whites have 100 times more liquid wealth than blacks, and 65 times more than Latinos. Liquid wealth consists of assets that can readily be turned into cash, usually for emergencies. It includes cash on hand, money in a checking account and government bonds and stocks. Blacks have a median liquid wealth of $200 and Latinos $340 compared to $23,000 held by whites. When you exclude retirement savings, blacks have a liquid wealth of $25 and Latinos have $100 whereas whites have $3,000. This makes a majority of blacks and Latinos, unlike whites, “liquid asset poor” — meaning unable to survive three months at the poverty line.
The study says: “This absence of liquidity not only would thrust families into an immediate crisis if they were to experience any disruption in their income stream, it would also reduce their ability to take risks that might be necessary to improve their economic position over the long haul.”
3. Twenty-one percent of blacks, 17 percent of Latinos, and 11 percent of Asians — compared to 6 percent of whites — have no tangible assets whatsoever. Having tangible assets, such as a home or car, is important in terms of diversifying the types of assets you have. In terms of financial assets, 38 percent of blacks and 35 percent of Latinos have no financial assets at all, compared to 14 percent of whites. For a majority of blacks and Latinos who do have a financial asset, a checking account is their only one. Meanwhile, a majority of whites hold both checking and retirement accounts.
4. The net wealth of blacks decreased by 53 percent following the latest economic recession. Latinos' net wealth plummeted 65 percent and Asians lost 54 percent of their net wealth, while whites lost 16 percent of their net wealth. Because home ownership makes up a majority of Americans' net wealth, the housing crisis was responsible for much of this loss, though it affected homeowners of color disproportionately, as they lost more home equity than whites. And when adjusted for mortgage characteristics, such as income, marital status and region, blacks and Latinos were 80 and 35 percent, respectively, more likely to be underwater than their white counterparts.
22 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
this was 2012.
But not by quartile:
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-median-income-in-the-us-by-race-2013-9
