Median net worth for single black women: $5

[Malthus]

@BrainGlutton

No, I’m quite confident that Rand Rover’s point in the post I quoted was that social stratification isn’t important – that is, that (1) social stratification is inevitable, (2) therefore the details and the sociological and economic causes of any particular instance of it are “not really worthy of thinking a whole lot about.” The first is debatable; the second is flat wrong.

Could well be that’s what he thinks, but what he appears to be saying is that the this study results in a “statistical artifact”.

[Kimstu]

@Algher

I would love to have the exact same stats with income as well, and an educational breakdown.

Table 6 on p. 15 of the full study report gives median incomes for full-time workers of different gender and racial groups, but not broken down by age category.

The median incomes for female workers are a lot more tightly bunched than the median net worth levels ($36K median earnings for white women, $31K for black women, $25K for Hispanic, $41K for Asian, etc.), and also a lot closer to those of their male counterparts. Considering income for full-time workers alone, and lumping the different age groups together, significantly shifts the economic picture.

[Kimstu]

@LonghornDave

The shocking part is how different black women are than white women. In my mind, the questions this raises are really why do black women have so many children out of wedlock as compared to white women when it clearly is disadvantageous to do so.

My guess would include the following reasons:

1. For very poor underclass women who have very little access to any but the most marginal jobs, it’s an occupation and source of income: having young children entitles one at least temporarily to government welfare benefits like TANF, for which the childless poor don’t qualify.

2. It serves, as I said above, as a sort of traditional “social safety net”: poor black communities tend to depend more on family networks for financial support than some other communities do, so having children is in some sense an investment in future support.

3. It’s an alternative to perpetual childless spinsterhood in a population where there are many fewer men than women able to form stable families, due to the high incarceration rates for men.

4. In some poor communities, by this point, it’s just become established as a cultural tradition. If being a single mother is the norm in your family and community, you’re less likely to consider the pros and cons of it critically rather than just accept it as the way life is.

[Rand_Rover]

@BrainGlutton

No, I’m quite confident that Rand Rover’s point in the post I quoted was that social stratification isn’t important – that is, that (1) social stratification is inevitable, (2) therefore the details and the sociological and economic causes of any particular instance of it are “not really worthy of thinking a whole lot about.” The first is debatable; the second is flat wrong.

What I said was not worth thinking too hard about was why one group or another happened to turn out to be the very bottom group in any particular study of net worth. In fact, if the numbers are sliced and diced differently, I bet we could get a group of white folks on the very bottom. College students and farmers come to mind as two groups where white people in heavy debt are probably over-represented.

[Rand_Rover]

@LonghornDave

The primary debt that should be causing younger people to have a negative net worth is student loan debt. I’m not an expert on them, but I believe that most student loans have terms from 7 to 15 years. Even if you went to law school for three years following undergrad, you should have paid off that debt by the time you are 40.

Student loans can be consolidated, which stretches out the term to 30 years at a very low interest rate (mine are at 2% or so).