> income differential is enough to account for the difference
> in ability to save and raise a mortgage on a house, the climbing
> value of which, I would guess, is the reason for the difference
> in wealth (i.e. fixed assets, not income).
The study specifically excluded housing wealth, but nice to see that you even read the article -- let alone the paper itself.
I've seen a lot of claims that it's as simple as missing out on the last few bull markets over the last 20 years: Whites participated and grew wealthier; Blacks didn't. I've also seen some speculation about "the culture of investing" and whether Blacks, as a group, "trust" investments. It seems like there's a lot of reasons, none as slam-dunk as Doug's "inheritance, mostly" claim. If it was "mostly" inheritance, you'd have to believe that the difference between the two groups from start to finish is that the White group had someone with some wealth die during the 20 year period. So while I'm sure there's some of that, it certainly doesn't seem clear that it's "mostly" any one thing.
The most alarming thing to me was that it used to be the case that high-income Blacks had more wealth than middle-income Whites but that's no longer true. That seems really crazy.
/jordan