Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Race and wealth inequality

A $95,000 question: why are whites five [sic] times richer than blacks in the US?:
A huge wealth gap has opened up between black and white people in the US over the past quarter of a century – a difference sufficient to put two children through university – because of racial discrimination and economic policies that favour the affluent.

A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families' assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000.
Doing the arithmetic correctly, though, seems to show that a typical white family is twenty times wealthier than a typical black family, up from eleven times wealthier in the mid-1980s.

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