If I asked you: would you rather have over a million dollars or 160 thousand in thirty
years, what would you choose?
Now consider this: what if, for every dollar you earned, someone else earned two?
How about if for every dollar of wealth you gained, someone else gained six?
In 1983, whites in their thirties had an average net worth of 184,000 dollars.
Today, these whites, who are in their early sixties, have accumulated 1.1 million dollars
in wealth.
In contrast, blacks have seen their wealth go from 54,000 dollars to 161,000 and Hispanics
from 46,000 dollars to 226,000.
The racial wealth gap grows sharply with age.
Over the past three decades, wealth disparities continued to worsen.
Though the United States is one of the wealthiest countries, to many Americans this prosperity
remains out of reach.
Blacks and Hispanics, who strive to make a better life for themselves and their families,
do not have the same asset building opportunities.
They are less likely to own homes and retirement accounts, so miss out on these traditionally
powerful wealth building tools.
“Wealth is where economic opportunity lies.”
Setting up automated savings, drawn from your income, allows you to build wealth—through
education, your home, or your retirement savings.
Lack of assets, on the other hand, means a difficult life -- when a rainy day hits, you’re
unable to pay bills and don’t have enough food to eat.
Our social safety net targets the day-to-day costs of living.
But without fair policies, such paths to building wealth vanish.
Today, these avenues are harder to access because it’s tougher to qualify for home
loans.
To make matters worse, wealth disparities are passed from generation to generation.
Black and Hispanic families are five times less likely than white families to inherit
money that can help with down payments on a home.
In order to narrow the racial wealth gap, we need to lower the barriers to building
assets.
Here’s where things stand: in 2009, over half the 400 billion dollars the federal government
spent encouraging families to build assets went to the top 5 percent of income-earners.
Meanwhile, low-income families received next to nothing.
Now imagine you have the same opportunity to earn income and gain financial security
as anyone else.
If that’s the course we want to set, wealth is where the economic opportunity lies.