A new report focusing on the racial dimensions of inequality in America connects the richest 10 percent of households getting richer and the wealth of the median, or typical, American family declining.
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) report also cites low levels of black and Latino wealth, combined with their growing proportion of the population, as key factors in the overall decline in median household wealth from about $84,000 in 1983 to $82,000 in 2016. Together, blacks and Latinos make up about 30 percent of the U.S. population.
“As we become a majority black-and-brown society, it is a problem that a huge percentage of the economy has stagnating wealth,” said Chuck Collins, one of the authors of “Dreams Deferred: How Enriching the 1% Widens the Racial Wealth Divide.” Check out the full story here.
By Holly Edgell, St. Louis Public Radio
