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> If you want to know if an economy is only benefiting the already wealthy, look at black people. Why not look at hispanic households? The vast majority of th
by adventured 7y ago
> If you want to know if an economy is only benefiting the already wealthy, look at black people.
Why not look at hispanic households?
The vast majority of the current US hispanic population didn't exist in the US just 30-40 years ago. Their wealth started from almost nothing. Most hispanic immigration to the US has been low skill labor, from extremely poor nations. In four decades, hispanics have become the second largest demographic and have become richer than black households.
From 2013 to 2016, the median hispanic household net wealth soared 45%, versus 18% for white households, and 30% for black households. As the larger demographic, I'd argue hispanic households are a better representation of if the economy is only benefiting the already wealthy. Hispanics (75% under 54 years old) are also a far younger demographic than whites (majority over 55 years old), and a moderately younger demographic than blacks. As a far younger demographic hispanics are less likely to have age-accumulated wealth. So that also gives you an excellent indicator on new wealth creation.
Finally, hispanics are far less likely to have a high school level education. 36% of hispanics in the US do not, versus 17% for blacks and 8% for whites. That's another item in favor of hispanic households being a stronger indicator to watch for your premise.
- zbyte64 7y agoThose are compelling reasons to take a larger look. I found charts tracking median household income by race, skip to part 3: https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/ Seems hispanic and black families are both experiencing below average gains.
- scarface74 7y agoThat’s in large part because of the housing crisis. While home values have for the most part recovered, they haven’t recovered in majority minority neighborhoods - even accounting for size, school quality, etc.
- pessimizer 7y agoI think that you're making a lot of demographic assumptions about the US hispanic population that I'd have to see a reference for other than the growth in household net wealth (often a bad statistic because households grow and shrink) and the age distribution which I totally believe. The relation of educational attainment to wealth would also have to be something I'd have to be shown; otherwise, I'm not sure why you're mentioning it. Lastly, specifically in regards to Mexico, there has been a massive outmigration, with a drop in the number of undocumented immigrants of 1.1 million from 2008-2014, and documented immigrants of 140,000 between 2009-2014. These are net numbers, meaning that there's been a large churn in the population that just doesn't exist with black people. So that's my case why black people would be a better group to look at; you're looking at the same black people throughout the entire period, and their wealth level has been known throughout the entire period.