Data and code accompanying "The Racial Wealth Gap and the Role of Firm Ownership"This paper develops an overlapping generations model that isolates the impact of the U.S. racial wealth gap in 1962 on the long-run dynamics of wealth. The model predicts that one component of the initial gap, firm ownership, coupled with the intergenerational transfer of that ownership, results in a permanent wealth gap independent of other dimensions of inequality. This implies that even if all discrimination against black Americans had ceased upon the end of Jim Crow, the wealth gap would have persisted without a reparations policy addressing the fact that the initial firm ownership gap arose in the first place.

Using a model that captures the dynamics of wealth accumulation over time, the researchers find that the income gap is the primary driver behind the wealth gap.

A growing body of research documents the importance of wealth and the racial wealth gap in perpetuating inequality across generations. We add to this literature by examining the impact of wealth on child income by race, while also extending our analysis to three generations. Our two stage least squares regressions reveal that grandparental and parental wealth and the younger generation’s household income is strongly positively correlated. We further explore the relationship between income and wealth by decomposing the child’s income by race. We find that the disparity in income between black and white respondents is mainly attributable to differences in family background. In context, differences in family background are stronger than differences in educational attainment. When we examine different income percentiles, however, we find that the effect of grandparental and parental wealth endowment is much stronger at the top of the income distribution. These findings indicate that wealth is an important source of income inequality.

In 2024 the median annual income of Asian households in the United States was 121,700 U.S. dollars. They were followed by White households, who's median earnings were 92,530 U.S. dollars. Furthermore, Black Americans and American Indian and Alaska Native families had the lowest household incomes. That year, median income among all U.S. household rose to 83,730 U.S. dollars.

PSID data extract for computing per capita white-to-Black wealth gaps and active saving rates of Black and white Americans during 1984-2019.

In this paper, we address what has been termed “the Fed view,” the Federal Reserve’s model for black-white wealth inequality, articulated in a series of mutually consistent papers making two arguments. First, the Fed view has it that the black-white wealth gap, when measured with an “expanded wealth concept,” is smaller than previously thought. Second, the Fed view has it that the black-white wealth gap is primarily explained by income differences shaped by personal decisions around human capital acquisition, family structure, risk taking, and the legacy of residential segregation.

Does the measurement of the racial wealth gap shift depending on the model, method, and data set used? We contrast the traditional mean Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition with the distributional Recentered Influence Function (RIF) methods. The untransformed, logarithm-transformed, and inverse hyperbolic sine-transformed versions in both Survey of Consumer Finances and Panel Study of Income Dynamics data sets exhibit similarities. The Oaxaca-Blinder (mean) decomposition highlights that receiving an inheritance explains a larger portion of the racial wealth gap than educational attainment. Conversely, the RIF method at the median suggests that educational attainment accounts for more of the wealth gap than inheritance receipt.

In 2024, **** percent of Black people living in the United States were living below the poverty line, compared to *** percent of white people. That year, the overall poverty rate in the U.S. across all races and ethnicities was **** percent. Poverty in the United States The poverty threshold for a single person in the United States was measured at an annual income of ****** U.S. dollars in 2023. Among families of four, the poverty line increases to ****** U.S. dollars a year. Women and children are more likely to suffer from poverty. This is due to the fact that women are more likely than men to stay at home, to care for children. Furthermore, the gender-based wage gap impacts women's earning potential. Poverty data Despite being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, the United States has some of the highest poverty rates among OECD countries. While, the United States poverty rate has fluctuated since 1990, it has trended downwards since 2014. Similarly, the average median household income in the U.S. has mostly increased over the past decade, except for the covid-19 pandemic period. Among U.S. states, Louisiana had the highest poverty rate, which stood at some ** percent in 2024.

"Neighborhood Financial Health (NFH) Digital Mapping and Data Tool provides neighborhood financial health indicator data for every neighborhood in New York City. DCWP's Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) also developed NFH Indexes to present patterns in the data within and across neighborhoods. NFH Index scores describe relative differences between neighborhoods across the same indicators; they do not evaluate neighborhoods against fixed standards. OFE intends for the NFH Indexes to provide an easy reference tool for comparing neighborhoods, and to establish patterns in the relationship of NFH indicators to economic and demographic factors, such as race and income. Understanding these connections is potentially useful for uncovering systems that perpetuate the racial wealth gap, an issue with direct implications for OFE’s mission to expand asset building opportunities for New Yorkers with low and moderate incomes. This data tool was borne out of the Collaborative for Neighborhood Financial Health, a community-led initiative designed to better understand how neighborhoods influence the financial health of their residents.

Graph and download economic data for Income Gini Ratio for Households by Race of Householder, All Races (GINIALLRH) from 1967 to 2024 about gini, households, income, and USA.