Wealth is stripped from families of color – no safety net makes achieving economic security impossible

[Jhumpa, “EXPLORING GUARANTEED INCOME THROUGH A RACIAL AND GENDER JUSTICE LENS,” Roosevelt Institute, June 2019 https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI_UBI-Racial-Gender-Justice-brief-201906.pdf, accessed June 26, 2023, GDS-LL]

WEALTH: THE TRUE INDICATOR OF ECONOMIC STABILITY

Wealth—i.e., what one owns minus what they owe—is the most important indicator of an individual’s or family’s economic position. Wealth is comprised of income, savings, and assets, such as property and non-liquid assets, as well as debt owed. Wealth is the money you draw upon in a case of an emergency, such as an immediate car repair, unforeseen medical cost, or a natural disaster.

Wealth is used as a both a safety net and a generator of more wealth. When wealth is passed on from one generation to the next, it crystalizes economic security from one generation to the next. Wealth makes it possible for people to purchase a home, avoid student loans by paying for education outright, or start a business. Without wealth or access to significant social capital, individuals have no safety net to fall back on. Wealth is often stripped or extracted from families—particularly families of color—through practices like unpaid labor, depressed property values in certain neighborhoods, criminal justice fines and fees, and student or medical debt.

When wealth is passed on from one generation to the next, it crystalizes economic security from one generation to the next.

In addition to the massive concentration of wealth held by a select few mentioned at the start of this brief, the differences in wealth between white Americans and people of color is at its highest level in 25 years (Kochnar and Fry 2014). In 2016, the typical white household held $171,000 in wealth—10 times that of the typical Black household, and about 8 times that of Latinx households (Kochnar and Cilluffo 2017).

Wealth inequities also exist along the intersections of race and gender; disparities in wealth accumulation are a result of historic and present-day barriers that people of color and women face when trying to build wealth and achieve economic security and prosperity. The median wealth for single men in the US is $10,150, compared to $3,210 for single women (Chang 2015). Breaking this down further by race/ethnicity, we find that single Black and Latinx women have a median wealth of $200 and $100 respectively, compared to $28,900 for single white men (Chang 2015).