Black US Poverty

The National Urban League released its annual "State of Black America" report. Blacks were twice as likely to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be imprisoned compared with whites, the study said. Blacks also lost their homes due to foreclosure at a greater rate than other ethnic groups.
25 percent of black Americans still in poverty.

According to Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve, the “wealth gap” between white Americans and Black Americans has gotten worse in recent years. The latest available data (from 2007) shows that for every dollar in wealth held by a white household, the typical Black household has just 10 cents. Hispanics have now moved ahead of Blacks. They now have 12 cents in wealth for every dollar of white wealth.

Wealth accumulation tends to be inter-generational. Indeed, most experts agree that the single biggest predictor of how much wealth you will accumulate is the net worth of your parents and how much of it they were able to pass on to you. However, this economic truism does not explain why Hispanics have started to accumulate more wealth than Blacks.

Overall, however; the years of the Bush administration were not good for most Americans. The Federal Reserve report shows that the net worth of the average American family is less today than it was in 2001.