Which group faced

One important factor is the rising age of the second generation — people born in the U. Currently, a large share is not yet eligible to vote.

But by , their median age will be 36, according to the new projections. Among immigrants who arrived within the past five years, Asians already outnumber Hispanics, in part because of a sharp recent drop in immigration from Mexico. The increased share of Asian immigrants among all immigrants means that education levels of the foreign-born population could rise sharply, because Asian immigrants tend to be better educated.

The rise of the Asian share of the immigrant population also could have implications for the political debate about immigration over the next 50 years. Americans today have mixed views about the impact of immigrants on society, but tend to have more favorable views of Asian and European immigrants than other groups, according to a recent Pew Research survey.

The projections also show a change in birth patterns, with a continuing dip in average lifetime births to Hispanic women and a slight rise in average lifetime births to Asian and white women. Note: White refers to non-Hispanic whites, black refers to blacks alone. Structures categorized as mobile home, boat, RV, van, etc. African Americans are also more likely to live in multigenerational households where there may be older family members who are considered high risk.

As shown in Figure O , black workers are twice as likely as white workers to live in households with three or more generations, such as a grandparent living with children and grandchildren.

While older people have been encouraged to isolate themselves as a preventative measure, this presents a challenge in homes where other members of the household must work outside of the home. The once-in-a-generation challenges presented by the coronavirus have required leaders in government and private industry to respond quickly in order to minimize the threat to public health as well as the economic harm.

Consistent with the scale of the crisis, many of the actions taken have been widespread in terms of the number of people helped, and the magnitude of the interventions has been unprecedented. Still, even such a broad-reaching response can yield uneven results because of differential access to the resources needed to equitably implement the response. Decisions to close schools and most businesses have meant that work and learning are taking place at home and online, requiring access to computers and digital connectivity.

While the majority of households in the United States have a computer and internet access, racial disparities exist. This racial disparity in computer and internet access is often referred to as the digital divide. Considering that the median black household income is well below those thresholds Figure H , they are more likely to qualify; however, racial differences in access to bank accounts have presented challenges for disbursing the money to unbanked households quickly via direct deposit.

According to a report from the FDIC, Providing support to small businesses has been a top priority of legislation designed to lessen the harmful economic effects of the pandemic. In this analysis, we use the April decline in payroll employment by industry as a measure of which businesses have been most affected by reduced demand and are therefore more vulnerable to business failure due to the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the industries with the largest total job losses in April were in accommodation and food services, retail, and health care and social assistance.

As shown in Figure Q , The large number of job losses in these industries is due in part to the fact that they employ many more people than other industries. Based on this measure, the largest percentage losses in payroll employment were in arts, entertainment and recreation; accommodation and food services; and other services. These three industries account for almost a third of black-owned businesses Census Bureau, Survey of Business Owners The CARES Act also established the Paycheck Protection Program PPP , which offers loans to small businesses to use for payroll costs, mortgage interest, rent, and utilities—loans that are forgivable on the condition that the businesses retain or rehire employees at their pre-pandemic levels of pay SBA a.

While a very small share of black-owned businesses are employers—only 4. Census Bureau a —sole proprietorships, independent contractors, and self-employed individuals are also eligible to apply SBA b. One of the main barriers cited by small black-owned businesses has been a lack of preexisting banking relationships with the larger lenders that were first to get the program up and running in their systems.

The biggest shortcoming of the PPP was that its total funding level was capped, which made it a zero-sum dash to be the first to apply. The defining features of parallel plans in the United Kingdom and Denmark is that they are open-ended and hence not zero-sum among businesses White ; Thompson The global impact of COVID, both in lives lost and economic devastation, is likely to leave a lasting mark for years to come.

The best path forward includes making sure that we use the painful lessons learned during this crisis to better prepare ourselves for the next one. The disparate racial impact of COVID illustrated in this report should come as no surprise given the ongoing legacy of racism that continues to produce unequal outcomes affecting nearly every aspect of life in the United States.

If we are to protect African Americans from suffering under the same needlessly heavy burden during the next economic or public health crisis that they are suffering under now, we must work diligently to address long-standing underlying racial disparities in economic and health outcomes. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, October Darity Jr. Economic Indicators: Jobs and Unemployment. Last updated May 8, Fitzhugh, Earl, Aria Florant, J. Flitter, Emily. Gould, Elise.

Economic Policy Institute, February Gould, Elise, and Heidi Shierholz. Manning, Alan. Princeton, N. Meepagala, Shawn, and Carl Romer. Center for Global Data. Accessed May 29, Mikati, Ihab, Adam F. Benson, Thomas J. Luben, Jason D. Sacks, and Jennifer Richmond-Bryant. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The Kerner Report. Center for Economic and Policy Research, April Rothstein, Richard. New York: Liveright. Sass, Jennifer. Shierholz, Heidi. Accessed May Thompson, Derek.

Census Bureau. Data from the Survey of Business Owners , published September 25, Survey of Business Owners September White, Andreas. Kinsley Napley, May 7, Wilson, Valerie, and William M. Rodgers III. Economic Policy Institute, September Zipperer, Ben, and Elise Gould. See related work on Black Americans Coronavirus. The black-white wealth gap is a result of the institutionalized obstacles blacks face in building wealth.

Take assets, for instance: The U. Retirement savings accounts such as k plans and individual retirement accounts IRAs , as well as mortgage borrowing to finance a primary residence, receive preferential treatment under the tax code. Yet blacks are less likely to work in jobs that carry benefits such as retirement savings due to historical occupational segregation. Racial differences also exist with respect to debt.

Typically, blacks have more costly—or high-interest—debt, such as auto loans, student debt, and credit card debt, than whites. The black-white wealth gap reflects differences both in assets and in debt. And while higher education and increased income offer some benefits, they are insufficient to close the wealth gap. Table 3 summarizes median wealth by race and several key demographics such as education, marital status, and income in The data reveal that blacks who have higher education levels, are married households, and obtain higher incomes still acquire significantly less wealth than whites who lack those qualifications.

The wealth gap also does not noticeably shrink with age. Likewise, higher income does not close the wealth gap. Blacks in the top one-fifth of the income distribution still have less than one-third the wealth of whites in the same income distribution level. Factors that are generally associated with rising wealth—education, marriage, education, and income—are unevenly distributed by race.

Even when controlling for these factors, a massive wealth gap exists for all subgroups. Figure 3 demonstrates that blacks face systematic obstacles in shrinking the racial wealth gap in a slightly different way. The data show the median inflation-adjusted wealth of households as they aged by looking at households in —when they were between 23 and 38 years old—and comparing them with how they fared in in —when they were between 50 and 65 years old.

Both racial groups in this age cohort coincidentally should have benefited from greater homeownership, lower interest rates, and a rising stock market. At a minimum, the gap should not have widened as people aged. That is, however, exactly what happened. Blacks in this age group had 24 percent of white wealth in the same age group in —the largest share over the past three decades. By , this share dropped to only The widening gap can be attributed in part to the foreclosure crisis, which had a devastating effect on communities of color, who were disproportionately targeted for subprime loans.

Indeed, black families lost 48 percent of their wealth during the financial crisis. That is, blacks have encountered mounting systematic obstacles—such as mortgage-market discrimination and labor market segmentation—that increased the wealth gap as they aged and neared retirement.

Much of the wealth gap can be traced to blacks having significantly less access to important savings vehicles—such as housing and retirement accounts—than their white counterparts. Table 4 summarizes the shares of blacks and whites with specific assets such as residential housing and retirement accounts, as well as the median amounts that both groups own in those categories.

In , only 41 percent of blacks owned their homes, compared with The data in Table 4 show similar differences for retirement savings. Only Further, blacks were less likely to obtain other nonretirement financial saving options—such as savings bonds and mutual funds—than was the case for whites.

Most blacks and whites had some of these savings, but the median savings of blacks were just Finally, the data show that in , blacks were less than half as likely to own private business interests as whites. Blacks thus have less access to savings and have built up fewer assets than whites, even when comparing for the same types of assets and regardless of the type of assets.

The gaps in the likelihood of owning specific assets—such as retirement savings, a home, or a business—and in the median values of such assets are large. That is, the black-white wealth gap is in part a pervasive difference in asset ownership. On the other side of the ledger, debt tends to be more detrimental to blacks than for whites, largely because the types of debt they owe—such as car or student loans—are more costly. Despite blacks being slightly less likely to owe money than whites; only slightly more than three-quarters of blacks owed any debt, compared with 85 percent of whites.

The total amount of debt that African Americans owed in was approximately one-third that of what whites owed. Relative to their incomes, blacks generally had debt payments that were almost as costly as those for whites— More costly debt—such as car loans, student loans, and credit card debt—is the main driver for the discrepancy between outstanding debt and debt payments when comparing blacks to whites. Though federal student loans have generous repayment options, they are a more expensive type of debt than other instruments such as mortgages.

Blacks are particularly less likely to owe money on a mortgage or home equity line of credit, which tend to be a comparatively less expensive way to borrow. Yet blacks are slightly more likely to owe installment loans such as car and student loans than whites.

Similar to the wealth gap, the income gap has worsened over time. According to a Economic Policy Institute report, the income gap between blacks and whites has grown since the s. In , college-educated black women with more work experience actually earned slightly higher wages than college-educated white women with the same experience.

Similarly, while the gap between college-educated black and white men in was slightly less than 10 percent, it rose to nearly 20 percent by Furthermore, blacks are more likely to be unemployed than whites. In , in the aftermath of the Great Recession, black unemployment swelled to 16 percent, while white unemployment topped out at slightly less than 9 percent.

Put differently, the black-white gaps in unemployment, labor force participation, and employment-to-population ratio cannot be explained by measurable factors such as marital status, education, age, or geographic location. Both the Economic Policy Institute EPI and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reports suggest that the unobserved or unexplained factors that play a role in the black-white income and employment gap include employment discrimination, weak enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, or racial differences in unobserved skill levels—as opposed to measurable factors such as educational attainment or work experience.

There are several potential reasons why blacks experience higher rates of unemployment and earn lower wages than whites. As the EPI report notes, blacks contend with labor market discrimination, which is not easily measured. Black workers are also more sensitive to the business cycle and thus are more significantly impacted by negative economic shocks.

Between and , for example, as the economy neared full employment, the income and employment gaps between blacks and whites shrank. In , Finally, it is likely that disparities in employment may actually be underestimated because they do not account for the large number of blacks who have been negatively impacted by a criminal justice system that has aggressively and persistently targeted communities of color.

Policymakers should use the equity framework of targeted universalism to deliver solutions in closing the black-white racial wealth gap.

The following recommendations should be viewed through this lens and aim to address historical and systematic barriers to equality. The analysis in the earlier sections of this report reinforces how critical assets are to wealth building and to intergenerational wealth transmission.

African Americans, however, face systemic barriers to acquiring, maintaining, and obtaining returns from assets such as housing, retirement and savings accounts, and business investments. It is therefore crucial to ensure that policies aimed at reducing the black-white wealth gap focus on African Americans gaining access to the type of wealth-building instruments that can help them build and transfer wealth over time.

Housing has always been and continues to be the main vehicle for families to build wealth. This is especially true for black families. Decades of public policies that have supported segregation and concentrations of high-poverty communities across the country have made it harder for black families to build wealth.

While the government promoted homeownership and suburbanization among whites, it further entrenched inequality in inner-cities through slum clearance and the construction of public housing—originally constructed as temporary middle-class housing and later a permanent housing solution for low-income people of color. Despite the illegalization of this process, the remnants of this practice in altered forms are still in place and active today. Because wealth is often built over generations, the legacy of these policies has made it even more difficult for future generations of black households to participate in homeownership.

Today, the disparity between white and black families who own homes is stark. Seventy-three percent of white families own a home compared with just 45 percent of black families. For example, black families are more likely to face predatory lending practices and to live in lower-income neighborhoods. According to a study conducted by Stanford University, when African Americans can purchase a home, they are more likely to be in low-income neighborhoods than their white middle- and low-income counterparts.

Not only is it harder for black families to purchase a home, but it is also less likely that they will receive a similar return on their investment. While increasing homeownership rates can help narrow the wealth gap between blacks and whites, it alone will not close it completely.

A Demos study estimated that closing the gap in homeownership rates between white and black families would cause the racial wealth gap to decrease by 31 percent.

Policies aimed at improving homeownership rates should focus on improving access to homeownership; lowering the cost of homeownership; and eliminating discriminatory practices and policies that prevent black families from seeing the same returns as white families. Community Development Financial Institutions CDFIs are banks, credit unions, and other local financial institutions that support small businesses and affordable housing and provide other financial needs to distressed urban and rural communities that mainstream banks do not serve.

CDFIs are critical to helping blacks purchase homes. As the data in this report reflects, making policy changes to close the black-white wealth gap must be an intentional process. Find out. Census Bureau to identify 11 distinct groups of Americans who are more likely than their peers to live in poverty.

Some of the groups on this list are more likely to grow up in difficult homes, poor neighborhoods, and inadequate school systems. They face discrimination and limited work or advancement opportunities, and the effects of generational poverty, all which make it more likely they will live in poverty.

The For example, only 4. Service workers represent a major part of the American workforce, and a large share of service workers earn minimum wage or close to it. As of , two-thirds of all American workers earning the minimum wage or less were in service occupations.

While Because women face a number of unique challenges they at a greater risk of poverty and financial hardship. Women are paid far less than men — women earned While much of this gap can be explained by the kinds of occupations women occupy, the pay gap between men and women persists even when job duties and qualifications are equal.

Women with masters and doctoral degrees earn Women are also more likely than men to work in low-paying occupations and spend more time providing unpaid caregiving to children or elderly family members. More: Progress in fighting poverty in America has slowed despite recent economic recovery. Some Two factors contributing to the high poverty rate among Hispanics and Latinos are the group's relatively low education and earnings levels. Just Individuals with a college degree are more likely to hold advanced, high-paying jobs and report higher incomes overall.

In the second quarter of , the typical Hispanic or Latino workers earned just A large share of Latino workers also face racial discrimination that can reduce the likelihood of gaining employment and ultimately lead to lower earnings.