Is Education Really the Ticket to Having a Better Future?

It has long been touted that to have a better life get an education. Is this true?

According to the Washington Post,  in many ways, the gap between the finances of Black Americans and White Americans is still as wide in 2020 as it was in 1968.  In the decades since the 1960’s, white wealth has soared while black wealth has stagnated according to the Washington Post.

What about the progress we hear about? is this a myth?

Further the Washington Post indicates that “The historical data reveal that no progress has been made in reducing income and wealth inequalities between black and white households over the past 70 years,” wrote economists Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick and a colleague.

1 in 7 white families are now millionaires. For black families, it’s 1 in 50 according to their data.

Higher education has long been thought to help enter the middle class. However, for Black Americans that has not been as true as one might hope. Again the Washington Post states, that the typical black household headed by someone with an advanced degree has less wealth than a white household with only a high school diploma.

The wealth gap is even more pronounced among less-educated Americans. A white household whose head has only a high school diploma has almost 10 times the wealth of a black family with the same education. The fact that black families start off with so much less wealth makes it difficult to catch up.

This gap effects our health as well as our economics.

The coronavirus crisis hit blacks especially hard

The first economic victims of the covid-19 crisis were the service industries that employ disproportionate numbers of black and brown workers. After businesses closed during the spring of 2020, fewer than half of all black adults had a job.

“The pandemic is hurting those people who are least able to bear its burdens. The Coronavirus pandemic  is a great increaser of inequality,” Powell, a prominent researcher said in a recent video conference with Princeton University. “It is low-paid workers in the service industries who are bearing the brunt of this.”

Join me as we have plenty of work to do!!