RWA Publications
The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters
By Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede, Lars Dietrich, and Thomas Shapiro, Institute for Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University
and
Amy Traub, Catherine Ruetschlin and Tamara Draut, Demos
As the United States rapidly becomes both a more diverse and unequal nation, policymakers face the urgent challenge of confronting growing wealth gaps by race and ethnicity. To create a more equitable and secure future, we must shift away from public policies that fuel and exacerbate racial disparities in wealth. But which policies can truly begin to reduce our country's expanding racial divergences?
Read The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy MattersLess Debt, More Equity: Lowering Student Debt while Closing the Black-White Wealth Gap
By Laura Sullivan, Lars Dietrich, Tatjana Meschede and Thomas Shapiro, Institute for Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University
and
Mark Huelsman and Tamara Draut
The dramatic increase in wealth inequality over the past several decades now forms the backdrop for many of today's most pressing public policy debates. Currently, the top 1 percent of U.S. households controls 42 percent of the nation's wealth, and nearly half of the wealth accumulated over the past 30 years has gone to the top 0.1 percent. Simultaneously, the wealth held by the bottom 90 percent of U.S. households continues to shrink, just as people of color are a growing percentage of the U.S. population.
Read Less Debt, More Equity: Lowering Student Debt while Closing the Black-White Wealth GapThe Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap
By Amy Traub, Dēmos
and
Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede and Thomas Shapiro, Institute for Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University
In addition to urgent concerns about racial bias in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, activists highlight deeply connected issues of economic exclusion and inequality. No metric more powerfully captures the persistence and growth of economic inequality along racial and ethnic lines than the racial wealth gap. The median white household possessed $13 in net wealth for every dollar held by the median black household in 2013. That same year, median white households possessed $10 for each dollar held by the median Latino/a household.
Read The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap