By Joint Center For Political & Economic Center
Photos: Joint Center\YouTube Screenshots
Researchers from the Urban Institute’s Black Family Thriving Initiative spoke with Black people in the middle-class and experts on the racial wealth gap, housing, employment, and other areas, to gain insights on how to accurately conceptualize the Black middle-class and the opportunities and barriers they face for upward mobility.
The Black Family Thriving Initiative seeks to reframe the narrative of being Black and middle-class in America and describes the challenges Black families, specifically Black middle-class families, face.
The initiative’s 2024 study of Black middle-class families highlights the need to improve traditional middle-class pathways, including “down payment assistance for first-, second-, and third-time homeowners and policies to increase college affordability — as well as increased protections against workplace discrimination.”
Urban Institute researchers also found that baby bonds are promising tools for building long-term wealth.
The Joint Center’s report, “The Best Black Economy in Generations – And Why It Isn’t Enough,” found that the Black median income is nearly $30,000 lower than the white median, and still below the white median income of 1972.
Additionally, at the Joint Center’s “Reimagining Tax Policy for Black Economic Justice” panel during The Wealth Agenda: Seizing the Moment for Black Economic Advancement convening, experts highlighted many tools to advance Black economic mobility, which included:
- Strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which lifted 10.6 million people out of poverty and reduced hardship for 17.5 million others.
- Increasing the role of net housing equity, which was the largest contributor to overall wealth growth for Black families, reflecting rising homeownership rates and higher leverage ratios, between 2019 and 2022.
- Bringing back the Department of the Treasury’s equity hub and Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity will help provide oversight over these systemic disparities.
Policymakers can learn from these programs to help solidify the existing pathways for wealth building and create new strategies to address the deep racial wealth divide in the United States.
