scholarly journals Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt: Rethinking the Racial Wealth Gap

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Seamster ◽  
Raphaël Charron-Chénier
Keyword(s):  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
Racial Wealth Gap ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Educational Debt ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Education Debt

Analyses of the recent surge in racial wealth inequality have tended to focus on changes in asset holdings. Debt patterns, by contrast, have remained relatively unexplored. Using 2001-2013 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), we show that after peaking in 2007, debt levels for most debt types had returned to pre-financial crisis levels for blacks and whites by 2013. The primary exception to this is education debt, on which this paper focuses. We show that educational debt has increased substantially for blacks relative to whites in the past decade. We also show that this increase in debt is not attributable to differences in educational attainment across racial groups. These trends, we argue, reflect a process of predatory inclusion, where lenders and financial actors offer needed services to black households, but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits. Predatory inclusion, we propose, is one of the mechanisms behind the persistence of racial inequality in contemporary markets.

Education Debt Owed by Older Families in the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances

FEDS Notes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (2292) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Bricker ◽  
◽  
Elizabeth Llanes ◽  
Alice Volz ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Older Families ◽  
Education Debt

Recent trends in wealth inequality among older Americans in two surveys

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Gabor Kezdi ◽  
Margaret Lay ◽  
David Weir
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Health And Retirement Study ◽  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
Older Americans ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Social Security Wealth ◽  
Retirement Study

We document changes in wealth inequality across American households with a member aged 55 or older, comparing data in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) with that in the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between 1998 and 2016. We examine net wealth including housing, financial and nonfinancial assets and debt, without the cash value of insurances, DB pensions or Social Security wealth. We find very similar distributions of net wealth in the two surveys between the 25th and 90th percentiles, but substantially higher wealth in the SCF at the top of the distribution. Both surveys show an increase in wealth inequality between 1998 and 2016, first mostly due to increased wealth at the top, and, after 2012, due to an increase in the share of households with very little wealth as well. Both surveys agree that wealth inequality by education and race, already substantial in 1998, increased further by 2016.

scholarly journals Financial Services Shopping Preferences: A Comparison Of African American And White Households

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Stevenson ◽  
D. Anthony Plath
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Shopping Behavior ◽  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
White Household ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Effective Service

<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 34.2pt 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The purpose of this study is to generate information for financial services marketers who are seeking to reach and provide more effective service to the growing African American segment. This information is needed because research has shown that the shopping behavior of African American consumers differs from that of their white counterparts in terms of information gathering and patronage patterns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Therefore, different marketing communications techniques may be needed to reach these people. Nevertheless, there has been a paucity of contemporary empirical studies of how shopping behaviors manifest themselves with regard to the purchase of financial services. This paper uses the Federal Reserve System's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances to analyze differences between black and white household financial services shoppers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Findings indicate that there are similarities and differences in the ways that blacks and whites seek to access the offerings of this industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Suggestions are offered to financial services marketers based on these findings.</span></span></span></p>

scholarly journals Intergenerational Wealth Mobility and Racial Inequality

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 237802311983179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian T. Pfeffer ◽  
Alexandra Killewald
Keyword(s):  
Adult Children ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Race Differences ◽  
Racial Wealth Gap ◽  
Relative Wealth ◽  
Wealth Gap

The black-white gap in household wealth is large and well documented. Here, we visualize how this racial wealth gap persists across generations. Animating the flow of individuals between the relative wealth position of parents and their adult children, we show that the disadvantage of black families is a consequence both of wealth inequality in prior generations and race differences in the transmission of wealth positions across generations: Black children both have less wealthy parents on average and are far more likely to be downwardly mobile in household wealth. By displaying intergenerational movements between parental and offspring wealth quintiles, we underline how intergenerational fluctuation coexists with the maintenance of a severely racialized wealth structure.

scholarly journals Wealth Stratification and Portfolio Choice

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 411-415
Author(s):  
Karl David Boulware ◽  
Kenneth N. Kuttner
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Portfolio Choice ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
The Past ◽  
Consumer Finances

This paper investigates the past decade's increase in wealth inequality along racial and ethnic lines. Using a new measure of wealth stratification based on data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that stratification increased significantly for blacks from 2007 to 2016; Hispanics exhibited a similar but less pronounced trend. Our regression analysis shows that relative to whites, blacks and Hispanics tend to invest more in houses and less in stocks, controlling for observable demographic factors. Consequently, these groups did not benefit as much as whites from the decade's spectacular increase in stock prices.

Federal Wealth Policies in Support of Jim Crow

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Survey Of Consumer Finances ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Racial Wealth Gap ◽  
Consumer Finances ◽  
Wealth Gap ◽  
Critical Aspects ◽  
Do So ◽  
Taxation Data

Recognizing the specific ways that systemic racism has and continues to function in our society is essential to developing a political economy that effectively examines contemporary problems and issues, whatever they may be. To do so, this paper identifies key elements of an anti-racist perspective and uses them to illuminate critical aspects of our racial wealth gap. Given the nature of wealth – its inherent durability and transferability across generations – this paper demonstrates how the current racial wealth gap is the result of past wealth policies that privileged whites. Further, it demonstrates how our current wealth policies are not simply encouraging the concentration of wealth among the 1 percent, but also recreating a system of racial segmentation. In a time in which overtly racialized policies and laws are often illegal, our wealth policies now function as a modern version of past Jim Crow laws and norms. This paper relies on the Survey of Consumer Finances and Joint Committee on Taxation data to document its claims.

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