IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/r00034/101324.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Tragic Reality

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Barkin

Abstract

Our nation has recently increased its focus on a tragic reality: Life outcomes vary widely by race. In June, the unemployment rate for black Americans was 15.4 percent, more than 5 percentage points higher than the rate for white Americans (10.1 percent). Even before the current crisis, when unemployment was at historic lows, there was a gap of around 3 percentage points. Median income for white households in 2018 was $71,000, compared to $41,000 for black households. The wealth gap is even larger: White households’ median net worth is nearly 10 times higher than that of black households. More than one-third of white adults have bachelor’s degrees while only about one-fifth of black adults do. And if you’re white, you’re even likely to live longer. Here in Richmond, Virginia, life expectancy can vary by as much as 20 years between some of the poorest, mostly black neighborhoods and the most affluent, mostly white neighborhoods.1 This has been made all too clear by the disproportionate toll the pandemic is taking on communities of color.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Barkin, 2020. "A Tragic Reality," Speech 101324, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:r00034:101324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.richmondfed.org/press_room/speeches/thomas_i_barkin/2020/barkin_20200803
    File Function: Speech
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:r00034:101324. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Matt Myers (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.