The top 10 percent of whites own 65.1 percent of all U.S. wealth
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released the latest installment of the Survey of Consumer Finances, this one from last year. Over at Demos, Matt Bruenig dug into the results and constructed the resulting wealth breakdowns by race. As most people would expect, there are some big gaps. But the scale of the difference is staggering. According to Bruenig's calculations, the median white family has about 10 times the wealth of the median Hispanic family, and 12 times that of the median black family.
Therefore, because white people are also more numerous than other groups, they own about nine-tenths of all the wealth in the country:
But that's not all. Wealth is also highly concentrated among whites — in fact, about a third of them have no wealth whatsoever. Most of it has coagulated at the top:
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Thus, Bruenig calculates: "the top 10 percent of white families own 65.1 percent of all the wealth in the nation." It's worth remembering.
