The racial wealth gap is not only hurting Black families in America,
“This is not something that affects only one community,” the report’s author said.
The is real and large.
“The typical Black family in America has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family — and that gap has been widening since 2004,” CBS News reported.
Consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimated just how much the
According to the report, if Black families held as much wealth as their white peers America’s economy would benefit from the addition of “between 4 and 6 percent of the projected GDP in 2028.”
The racial wealth gap affects a number of things for Black families, such as Blacks being kept out of homeownership by local and federal policy through much of the 20th century.
“The racial wealth gap is a reflection of long-term policies and practices by both the public and private sectors that have systematically disadvantaged black, Latinx and Native communities in favor of white Americans,” Nina Banks, a professor of economics at Bucknell University, told CBS News.
The typical white family is “worth about $171,000, while the typical Black family is worth $17,600. And because the wealth (or poverty) Americans are born into
This inequity has a major negative effect on the economy, said Jason Wright, a partner at McKinsey and one of the authors of the report.
“That’s not just the money in Black pockets, that’s the entire economy — dollars in the hands of African-Americans, being distributed to people of all types, all businesses, all over the country,” he added.
Many of the presidential candidates have proposed a wealth tax to help close the gap.
