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Over the last half a century, the dollar amount of the racial wealth gap—the difference in net worth held by white families and families of color—has grown substantially. Wealth or net worth is what you own minus what you owe.
In 1963, white families had about $45,000 more wealth than families of color, at the median (Figure 1). By 2019, white families had approximately $165,000 more wealth than Black families and about $153,000 more than Latino families (Figure 1). The typical Black families had 13 cents in wealth for every dollar of wealth held by white families in 2019 and Latino families had 19 cents. These gaps continue beyond 2019.
All families aspire to the opportunity wealth brings, yet structural racism limits opportunity for families of color, as illustrated by relatively flat Black and Latino family wealth over the decades, in contrast to the increasing (and variable) white family wealth (Figure 1.).
More than 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the typical U.S. Black and Latino family had $24,100 and $36,050, respectively, to weather the COVID-19 pandemic and pursue their dreams, while the typical white family had $189,100. READ MORE
