Even though new data today showed that inflation is slowing. Many
prices remain high, and the most vulnerable Americans are bearing
the brunt. William Branham has more on who is being hit hardest.
Judy. New data shows inflation has had an outsized negative impact
on Native American black and Latino families, in particular. A poll
out this week from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard
found 69% of Native Americans say inflation has caused serious financial
problems, as do 58% of black Americans and 56% of Latinos.
Just 44% of white and 36% of Asian households report similar hardships.
Alonso Plow is the chief science officer of the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, and he was involved in this research. The foundation
is one of the news hours funders.
Mr Plow. Very good to have you on the news hour. We have been tracking
how a lot of Americans across the spectrum have been hurt by inflation.
But these communities seem to be really suffering disproportionately.
Why is that?
Well while inflation influences and affects all of us, these are
communities for black indigenous Latino populations who are economically
marginal in the best of time. So one has to think about inflation
as just amplifying a situation of almost survival economics in the
best of time for these groups, So the impact goes from being a difficult
in terms of your economic status to barely being able to make it
trade off like not paying rent.
Not being able to get health care and actually food insecurity, so
the effects are immediate
and much more severe than most of us are facing with inflation.
It seems, it seems similar to the way in which Covid again revealed
all of these inequities that we knew existed in our society. But
again, it highlighted them in such stark relief. Inflation seems
to be doing exactly the same thing. The analogy with Covid is exactly
right. Covid pointed out longstanding disparities and against very
important to point out that these are not based on people's races
race but the effect of racism that creates a variety of marginalizing
factors housing
That's insecure neighborhoods that are not safe lack of health insurance.
Um, generations of that is going to put our populations at greater
risk for any kind of problem. Be it covid or inflation. One particular
fact jumped out. I mean the whole bunch of them dead. But this one
third of black and Latino families were saying that they had a hard
time affording food. Almost 40% of indigenous families said the same
thing.
How should we interpret that? I mean, that is very, very difficult
to cut back on feeding your family.
We should interpret that that these are people who are at the just
at the border line of survival on a day to day basis, so food insecurity
is a way of life. Trade offs are being made all the time between
healthcare paying rent, packing a lunch for your kid at school. Um
and again, a situation like inflation again, just tips you into more
of a precarious situation. That's a chronic problem, and it's unfortunate.
When that is only elevated in the context of covid disparities or
inflation disparities.
Another similar fact just to the point that you're saying that majority
is in each of these communities were saying they didn't have enough
savings to bridge one month of their normal expenses. And if you
think about that about family, not being able to have enough in the
bank
To bridge a month of their expenses. I mean, that is truly living
on the edge. Yes, our family again. These are minimum minimum wage
earning families are living on the edge. Um, and all data show that
there are scarce if any savings and then another long term impact
of marginalization is lack of trans generational wealth. Families
are polling showed that majority populations had family members had
helped them out of
Ah, other generations. But that's not the case when there has been
income inequality again a for generations in our black, brown and
indigenous populations.
We are seeing some signs that inflation is starting to wane slightly.
For these families. Does that give you a sense that okay, this might
turn around for them. Or do you worry that the setbacks that they've
suffered during this inflationary period might just mean they're
going to continue falling behind? I wish I could be more optimistic,
but I'm not. These are families who have been economically marginalized
throughout their life course. Uh, those kind of conditions in place
that create daily trade off between whether you can afford food,
whether
You can afford gas in the car. Uh, those those will continue. Um
and it's It's just unfortunate that we need a survey like this to
point out a problem that should be discussed every day. Large percentages
of our population are really living at the margin and so economically
vulnerable.
I mean, this research seems to point out that that as far as longer
term solutions to this I mean, we're talking about various systemic
issues in our society.
What people get paid, whether they have access to health care what
the social safety net looks like. I mean, those are seemingly very
difficult challenges for our leaders to address in the best of times
leaders have opportunities to address that and many of the approaches
to deal with these problems of poverty, marginality. I mean, this
is a rocket science. Other countries do it as a standard part of
their social welfare programs. Many elements in current legislation
that haven't been implemented, um
Around daycare childcare. There are many different approaches that
have been not found their way sufficiently into current legislation
that are remedies for this. Uh so the tragedy is not applying things
that we know will work. Uh, in order to eliminate this kind of disparity,
Alright, Alonso plow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Thank
you so much for being here.