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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Tag: Racial disparity

Racial Disparity Statistics

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America’s racial divide, charted, By Neil Irwin, Claire Cain Miller, and Margot Sanger-Katz, August 19, 2014, New York Times: “America’s racial divide is older than the republic itself, a central fault line that has shaped the nation’s history. This month it has manifested itself in sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., after a police killing of an unarmed young black man. The resonance of that event is related to deeper racial fissures between blacks and whites; that divide is the reason that the events in Ferguson amount to something bigger than a local crime story. What is the state of that larger divide? In what areas has there been meaningful progress toward shared prosperity over the last generation, and in what areas is America as polarized by race as ever…”

 

Black Male Employment

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The economy’s troubling double standard for black men, By Jonnelle Marte, July 2, 2014, Washington Post: “Fifty years ago today, the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in hiring and education. But for all the opportunities that have been opened to minorities since then, black men still need two more levels of education to have the same chances of landing a job as a white man. A black man with an associates degree has the same chances — about 88 percent– of finding a job as a white high school graduate, according to a recent analysis of employment rates and education for whites and minorities by Young Invincibles, a nonprofit group focusing on the economic issues impacting millennials. Getting a bachelor’s degree ups those chances to 93 percent for a black man, the same as a white man who dropped out of college. . .”

Student Debt and Homeownership

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Student debt Is hurting homeownership for blacks more than whites, By Nick Timiraos, June 20, 2014, Wall Street Journal: “Is student loan debt causing young adults to retreat from the housing market en masse? No, but it’s having some impact, and the debt burden appears to be hitting black borrowers harder than whites, says a recent paper from researchers Jason Houle of Dartmouth College and Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The authors look at the relationship between student-loan debt and homeownership for those under age 30. The authors do find an inverse relationship between student loan debt and homeownership, mortgage acquisition and the amount of mortgage debt. But the overall relationship is modest . . .”