Source: Pew Research Center
A report highlighted in an earlier post today questioned the long-term upward mobility of immigrants in the United States, in light of the recession and a predicted slow recovery. And at least as far as Latinos are concerned, the numbers in another new report seem to bear out the economic beating some have taken.
According to the Pew Research Center, Latinos’ median household wealth plummeted between 2005 and 2009. From the summary:
Median household wealth among Hispanics fell from $18,359 in 2005 to $6,325 in 2009. The percentage drop—66%—was the largest among all racial and ethnic groups, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project. During the same period, median household wealth declined 53% among black households and 16% among white households.
In a nutshell, the recession has widened the wealth gap between whites and minorities to a record level.The analysis found the median wealth of white households to be 18 times that of Latino households, and 20 times that of black households. The report reads:
These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest in the quarter century since the government first published such data, and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession.
Partly to blame is the housing market crisis, as Latinos derived nearly two-thirds of their net worth from home equity before the downturn and “a disproportionate share reside in states that were in the vanguard of the housing meltdown.” Homeowners in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona were hit particularly hard.
The entire report can be viewed here.
