EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) As the economy emerges from the recession and the national debate turns to limiting the cost of the social safety net, only one in four African Americans and one in six Hispanics reported owning stocks, bonds or mutual funds, a new poll shows.

In addition, only 46 percent of blacks and 32 percent of Hispanics said they had an individual retirement account or any similar retirement arrangement, according to a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University poll. Half of whites said they had stocks, bonds or mutual funds, and two in three said they had IRAs, 401(k)s or similar holdings.

The relative paucity of investments held by blacks and Hispanics tracks with previous studies, something that experts call an outgrowth of the gaping wealth disparities separating the races.

Not only are African Americans and Hispanics less likely than whites to own retirement accounts or investment securities, they also are far less likely to own homes, which remains the largest engine of wealth creation for most Americans. And when they do own homes, they tend to have less equity in them, in large part because they live in communities where prices appreciate more slowly, many analysts say.

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(Yahoo News) A new Brandeis University study that followed 2,000 families has found that the pay gap between white and black American families quadrupled in only 23 years, from $20,000 to $95,000.

Even when black families earn a significantly higher income than whites, the study found, they accumulated much less wealth. That disparity can’t be attributed to personal saving habits either, since blacks and whites save at the same rate. White families earning more than $30,000 a year accumulated $74,000 in wealth between1984 and 2007, whereas black families earning more than $50,000 accumulated only $18,000 in wealth during that period.

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(Physorg) The wealth gap between white and African-American families increased more than four times between 1984-2007, and middle-income white households now own far more wealth than high-income African Americans, according to an analysis released on Monday by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University.

IASP, in a research brief, also reported that many African Americans hold more debt than assets and at least 25 percent of African-American families had no assets to turn to in times of economic hardship. The fourfold increase in the wealth gap, it said, reflects public policies, such as tax cuts on investment income and inheritances, which benefit the wealthiest and persistent discrimination in housing, credit and labor markets.

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