Unequal Early Adulthoods: Racial and Ethnic Wealth Disparities during the Great Recession

ABSTRACT

This study identifies socioeconomic factors that contribute to wealth advantages or disadvantages across ethnoracial groups in early adulthoods during the Great Recession. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that current and childhood social class partially explain racial disparities in debt, assets, and assistance with housing payments but do little to account for disparities in homeownership. These results underscore the life course perspective that wealth inequality disrupts the maintenance of successful adulthood for minority racial groups. Ethnoracial disparities in homeownership are a critical lever of the wealth-race gap later in adulthood.

KEYWORDS:

• Wealth inequality
• homeownership
• great recession
• early adults
• race
• ethnicity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Radha Modi

Radha Modi is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. She specializes in research on race relations, immigrant incorporation, and economic inequality. Dr. Modi is working on her manuscript, Model Minority or Terrorist: What South Asians Show Us about Race in America. She has a chapter in the Oxford Handbook on Caste detailing caste presentation in the South Asian diaspora. In collaboration with South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a national nonpartisan organization working on civil rights, she authored a report entitled Communities on Fire: Confronting Hate Violence and Xenophobic Political Rhetoric, documenting the hate violence experienced by South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Arab communities following the 2016 election.

Alyasah Ali Sewell

Alyasah Ali Sewell is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and Founder and Director of The Race and Policing Project (www.theraceandpolicingproject.org). They develop methods for quantifying structural racism by drawing on neighborhood effects models. Their research identifies the role of inequitable policies in ethnoracial health disparities by focusing systemic gatekeeping in 1) policing; 2) mortgage markets; and 3) healthcare. Their work has been published in a range of outlets, including Social Science and Medicine, Sociological Methods and Research, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Research, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Health Services Research, Journal of Urban Health, and City and Community. They have received support and recognition from the National Institutes of Health, the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, and Planned Parenthood.