The Brookings Institution, July 6, 2020: How to build Black wealth
It is well-known that Black households hold significantly less wealth than White households in the United States. What may be less well-known is that this difference holds even after controlling for household characteristics and that – despite long-term gains by Black Americans in education and income in absolute terms and relative to Whites – the wealth gap appears to be growing over time.
In recent work with several co-authors, I examine wealth differences between Black and White households and present results that control for household income, and the head of the household’s age, educational attainment, marital status, and sex (if single). We use data from the 1989 to 2016 waves of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, widely considered to  be the most comprehensive survey of household wealth in the United States.
Consistent with an extensive literature, we show that, on average, Black households had less wealth than White households. In 2016, for example, the average Black household held $124,000 (or 54% less wealth than the average White household. The median or typical Black household reported about $43,000 (or 56%) less wealth than the median White household reported. Again, these results control for household characteristics.
