Published in Aug 2017

White people have 13 dollars for every dollar held by black Americans

The result is an expanding racial wealth gap. Now whites have 13 dollars for every dollar held by African Americans, a level of inequality not seen since 1989, when the white-black gap was 17 to 1, according to Pew researchers Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry.

The gap separating whites and Hispanics is not as huge but still massive: just over 10 to 1, a level not seen since 2001. The chart above show how wealth has fluctuated by race and ethnicity since  since the government began collecting the data in 1983: For blacks, the decline between 2010 and 2013 was precipitous–more than 33 percent.

Pew noted that decline is related to the 9 percent drop in median income for minorities during the three-year period covered in the report. Also, the black unemployment rate has been in double digits for years, and stood at 11.1 percent in November, even as the overall jobless rate was 5.8 percent. By comparison, Hispanics had a 6.6 percent unemployment rate in November, and the white jobless rate was 4.9 percent.

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By Michael A. Fletcher