Jun 27, 2024 - News
New Orleans' white households have 13x wealth of Black households: Report
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White households have an estimated 13 times the wealth as Black households in the New Orleans metro, according to a new report with a first-of-its-kind calculation from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Data Center.
Why it matters: Wealth indicates a community's access, opportunity and resilience, often generationally.
Zoom in: The Data Center's findings indicate that wealth accumulates with age, but again the disparity between New Orleans metro Black and white households is significant.
- For Black households, peaks below $80,000 and not until the retirement years — and Black households have twice the debt burden as white ones.
- White households surpass that peak after just 35 years of age, then keep rising to above $300,000.
The big picture: National wealth gap data is generally available, the Data Center says, but hasn't ever been calculated at the community level in New Orleans before.
- The New Orleans metro's numbers show a much wider gap than at the national level, which for white households sits at six times the wealth of Black ones, and five times the wealth of Hispanic ones, the Data Center says.
- "This racial wealth gap has been generations in the making, and it reflects social and economic injustices of the past, uneven opportunities in the present, and hopes for a future of shared prosperity," the report says.
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