Racial Wealth Gap Analysis

The United States has a total population of 323,341,000 as of April 2016 according to the US Census Bureau. The diversity of the United States population along racial and ethnicity lines makes the country a melting pot. The most recent data on the United States distribution of the total population according to race by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2014 National Projections. In 2014, the percentage of whites, blacks and Hispanics were 62.2%, 12.4% and 17.4% respectively. The majority of the population in the U.S. by race is white. The report by the Census Bureau also provides information on the percentage of minority, the non-whites and in 2014 it was 37.8%. The projected distribution of the population by race in 2060 indicates a lower percentage …show more content…
The wealth inequality in the United States is happening along racial lines and is worrying because wealth is the key to stability and growth. With the latest estimate by SIPP in Demos Report on Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters, the median white household had $111,146 wealth holdings in 2011, $104,033 more than the median wealth of black household and $102,798 more than median wealth of a Hispanic household. This means that black households only hold 6% of wealth owned by a white household and Hispanic households only owns 8% of wealth owned by a white. The wealth gap between the two races – Blacks and Hispanics – to the whites is uncomfortably large. This poses a major problem for the growth and stability of the United States economy in the future as the minority group continues to grow rapidly and are facing a wealth divide. If majority of the population are struggling with high levels of debt due to low net wealth value, the growth of the economy suffers tremendously as consumption decreases. A decrease in consumption leads to a decrease in investment, lower wages and the cycle …show more content…
This becomes a problem for students of colour as their family are less likely to be able to finance the costs of college education with their minimal wealth. Therefore, people of colour enter higher education with high levels of debt because to attend college without the financial support of their family they will need to take on student loan or work part time. As a result, with less time spent on studying and more on working to be able to support themselves financially, they are less likely to score as well as the white students who can concentrate on studying as their parents are able to afford to pay for their