isn't it really as simple as: your grandma bought a house for 10k and it is now worth $500k, when you sell it after her death. your mom and day had a similar dealio, socking away 500k after they sold it. plus, they had their savings and the life insurance policies.
now, you "inherit" "wealth".
this makes a massive difference in your life, the decisions you make, the colleges you can attend or send your kids to, the business you can or can't start, the investments you can or can't make, the house you can or cannot afford, etc.
> James Heartfield writes:
>
>> 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
>
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