The widening wealth gap between whites and Blacks/Latinos made theheadlineswhen astudy, published by the Pew Research Center and based on U.S. Census Bureau data, found that the median wealth of Latino households fell 66 percent and Black households fell 53 percent between 2005 and 2009. The median wealth of white households declined by only 16 percent. This is creating the biggest wealth disparities by race/ethnicity since the Census Bureau started calculating this 25 years ago. The median wealth of whites is now 20 times that of Blacks and 18 times that of Latinos.
The study andmedia coverageprimarily attributed the growing gap to a failure to diversify financial holdings by Blacks and Latinos, who often put savings almost entirely into real estate and also overextended themselves far more to purchase real estate than whites did. Much of that, no doubt, can be attributed tosubprime lendingand the greed of certain financial institutions. But there are other socioeconomic and cultural factors at playand there are solutions to remedy this gap.
Fair360, formerly DiversityInc interviewed Christian Weller, a senior fellow of theCenter for American Progress, who has done considerable research on the wealth gap. Here are his arguments for the reasons for the gapand solutions for what can be done, especially for corporate America.
