Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Education Does Not Fix Structural Wealth Inequality

It's commonplace for (white) people to say education is an equity solution. Income or wealth inequality? Education will fix it!

Well, not so far, as shown in this chart:

(Click to enlarge.)

I saw this courtesy of Jake Grumbach, who was responding to Gene Demby from NPR's Code Switch podcast. Grumbach sarcastically captioned the chart this way: "bRiDGe tHE RACial weaLTH Gap with EduCatiON."

Looking at this carefully, you will note that a Black person with a master's, professional, or doctoral degree has hardly any more net worth on average than a white person with some college or an associate's degree. A Black person with a bachelor's degree has substantially less net worth than a white person without a high school diploma. 

Not so far... not so much. Maybe it's not about education, you think?


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