A new report just released by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that African-American baby-boomers are more likely to have slipped down the socioeconomic ladder than their white counterparts. According to the series of three studies, 45 percent of black children born to parents earning middle-class incomes in the 1960s, about $55,000, are in the bottom 20 percent of wage earners today. In comparison, only 16 percent of whites from the same socioeconomic background find themselves in the same position. The report also reflects the fact that whites were more likely than blacks to rise out of the poverty they were raised in.
Columbia University sociologist Ronald Mincy, who served as an adviser on the study, told the Washington Post that researchers do not have a definite explanation for the findings, but speculated that there were many contributing factors. Mincy cited gaps in education, racial isolation, and a disparity in wealth and assets between blacks and whites as potential causes.
So what else is new? I wrote about this very subject several months ago: Black Baby Boomers and the American Dream.
If my grandparents had just gotten that forty acres and a mule they were promised, articles like these wouldn’t need to be written. I’m still open to the offer but with inflation and all, make that 140 acres please.
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