[go: up one dir, main page]

  EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Overestimates of the Racial Wealth Gap and of the Case for Reparations

John Tatom

No 208, Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise

Abstract: The racial wealth gap indicates relative wellbeing, but wealth differs for many reasons. For example, Black family heads are nine years younger. Adjusting for this reduces 2019 median white family wealth from 7.8 times as large to 4.6 times as large and the shortfall of overall Black wealth from $1.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion. Second, it shows the difference from using averages instead of medians, the representative measure when wealth is not normally distributed. Using averages assumes wealth differs only due to race and raises the Black shortfall to $8.4 trillion. Regardless of the size of the wealth gap, however, this paper argues that there is a long history of analyses of the bases for reparations, whose potential amounts were unrelated to the existence or size of a racial wealth gap. Most of those hypotheses and estimates are inconsistent with recent proposals to eliminate the gap using reparations

Keywords: wealth; redistribution; racial wealth gap; reparations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 H13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2022-04
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:jhisae:0208

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Steve H. Hanke ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-19
Handle: RePEc:ris:jhisae:0208