(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Every once in a while I see something that just stuns me, and I can barely form a coherent response.

This is an example. To put it simply, virtually all growth in US prosperity in the last 25 years has been enjoyed by white households. A pattern like this cannot happen in a land where opportunity is truly free and open to all.

In examining data from 1984 to 2007, Brandeis's Institute on Assets and Social Policy found that the average white family now has accumulated $95,000 more in total wealth than the average African-American family. One quarter of African-American families, the report notes, currently have no financial assets to protect themselves from financial ruin.

The report's authors argue that, through a mixture of policy mistakes and discrimination, most of the wealth during that period flowed into the hands of white families.

In a study published last year, the University of California, Berkeley's Emmanuel Saez found that income inequality in the U.S. had hit an all-time high in 2007. But the Brandeis study points to a "broken chain of achievement" among African-Americans that, even at relatively moderate levels of income, creates large disparities.

"By 2007, the average middle income white household accumulated $74,000," the report's authors note, "whereas average high income African Americans owned only $18,000."

Comments

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

The only response which comes to mine - and this is sad, I know - is that oddly... I'm somehow not surprised anymore...

Of course realize that this growth in white wealth is primarily concentrated in the top 5% and 1% - which has grown in leaps and bounds and are almost universally white. You take their total amount of wealth gained over the past 25 years, divide it by the total white population, and you will get number like that.

I am especially aware of this because the reported raise in average household income reported is actually higher than than household median income in the United States. What I would like to know is what the median income growth was by race and ethnicity. While I suspect whites will still be higher, it will be more comparable to the increase in income for black.

To sum up - you're looking at the mean of income increases. The outliers of the top 5% are so obscene that it makes it look whites, overall, had an average household income increase in excess of their actual incomes.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

The mean/median issue was my instinctive response to this data, too.

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

The central figures of the study (that white families now have $95k more in wealth compared to black families, compared to $20k more in 1984) are actually median figures according to the report itself.

Also, this isn't income increases, this is wealth, which is what you own minus debts. The "average middle income white household", according to the report, made about $30k a year in 1984 and has current (median) wealth of $74k. The "average high income black household" made over $50k in 1984, yet has (median) wealth of only $18k today.

In other words, there is a large difference even when not considering the (white) high-income outliers. Of course, they also have figures for "average high income white household", which makes the difference even more ridiculous, as their accumulated (median) wealth is 3x as much as the middle income white households.

Another striking thing to me about the data is that in 1984, AHI black households did actually have more wealth than AMI white households, and that AHI black households actually have less wealth than they did in 1984 (for AMI black households wealth is essentially flat).

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you for the clarification.