Posted on 04/14/2017 7:58:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The headline was numbingly familiar: “For Blacks, College is Not An Equalizer.” The op-ed in the Washington Post by Ray Boshara explored what he called a “troubling paradox,” namely that so many well-educated black Americans “feel so economically insecure.”
It’s a startling fact, Boshara continued, “that blacks with college degrees have lost wealth over the past generation.” White college graduates “saw their wealth soar by 86 percent” between 1992 and 2013, while black college graduates experienced a loss of 55 percent over the same period.
I made a little bet with myself as I read the piece: “Two-to-one he doesn’t talk about family structure.” Boshara is the Director of St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Center for Household Financial Stability and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. His piece is carefully argued and well researched. He makes some valid points, such as that black and white college graduates “share and receive wealth very differently.” Whereas white college graduates are likely to receive financial assistance from their parents, black college grads are more often the donors of funds — to struggling family members including parents — than the recipients of help themselves.
Boshara then lists some proposals for fixing the problem, like “lending circles” and “matched savings programs” to make college more affordable for black students, along with the usual calls to combat racial discrimination.
As I feared though, he avoided what I consider to be a key factor in the black/white difference. The great divide in wealth accumulation in America is founded on marriage. Married couples accumulate much more wealth than divorced or never married people do. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the median married couple in their sixties had ten times more wealth than a typical single person.
An Ohio State study found that divorce decreases wealth by an average of 77 percent. Jay Zagorsky, the study’s author, counseled: “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth.”
Now consider the demographics of black college graduates. The overwhelming majority are women. Females now account for 66 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks, 70 percent of master’s degrees, and 60 percent of doctorates. Women tend to desire husbands who are as educated or more educated than they are, which makes marriage more difficult for black women with higher education degrees. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, the percentage of black women college graduates aged 25 to 35 who have never married is 60 percent, compared to 38 percent for white college-educated women.
Further, only 2 percent of highly-educated white women had children out of wedlock, whereas 26 percent of black women with four-year degrees did.
Unsurprisingly, more black than white women marry men who have less education. The Brookings study found that only 49 percent of black, college-educated women marry men with at least some post-secondary education, compared with 84 percent of white, college-educated women. Since education is so closely tied to income, a household with two college graduates is overwhelmingly likely to make more income than a household with only one college graduate. More white and Asian couples fit this pattern. They pool more resources and hold onto their nest egg into retirement. Oh, and black couples are more likely to divorce than others.
There are many additional reasons that stable married couples accumulate wealth. Family members are more likely to loan and donate money to a son-in-law, say, than to a live-in boyfriend. Husbands and wives complement one another in wealth strategies (men tend to be risk-takers, women tend to be cautious). Married couples are healthier and miss fewer days of work. Married men seem to be more motivated to get jobs and promotions than singles. These are just some of the dozens of factors.
The bruising reality for all Americans – though, like most things, it is more stark among African Americans – is that men are falling behind. The retreat from stable families that began in the 1960s and really hit the skids in the 1980s, has now yielded adults who’ve been damaged (though not all obviously). As David Autor and Melanie Wasserman postulate, growing up in a mother-only home seems to hit boys harder than girls. Thus, there are fewer “marriageable” men for those women to marry, and the cycle becomes self-reinforcing.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with efforts to make college more affordable and to focus on racial discrimination, but the real source of the black/white wealth disparity probably owes more to the marriage gap than to those things. The Aspen Institute should focus on that.
— Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
I a good number of the people from a specific group are allowed into college on grounds other than merit, then, in the end, that group, on average, will be lower performers because lower performance raw material was allowed into the program.
This is not rocket science.
Bell Curve.
Hmmm? Lets see. Who was in power in DC during that time? Oh yes, The libtards and 1/2 Black Obama. Hmmmm?
This is a no-brainer. Affirmative Action has meant that less qualified blacks get to go to college, compared to their Caucasian and Asian counterparts. Because they’re less qualified to even begin to prepare for their futures, as a group they will have less success in the future.
>>Whereas white college graduates are likely to receive financial assistance from their parents, black college grads are more often the donors of funds — to struggling family members including parents — than the recipients of help themselves.<<
I didn’t get any money from my family and I did quite well, thank you.
If the researcher didn’t adjust for this right off the bat then the research was meaningless.
And yes, my wealth accumulation (as opposed to just earning and spending) started after I was married. But I attribute this to my particular and current wife. If I had stayed married to wife #1 I would probably be typing this from a library on the poor side of town.
Could it have anything to do with their majors?
All college degrees are not equal.
Black college graduates should only be comparable to those of other races with the same degree. Otherwise, that they have graduated college is meaningless.
And to further refine the statistics, employment should only count if it was in the field of the major. And ethnic/gender studies graduate flipping hamburgers does not count.
Majored in...?
RE: Could it have anything to do with their majors?
Yep, I was thinking of this myself.
Consider a black STEM graduate and a White or Asian STEM graduate.... has any objective study shown us that the latter make on average MORE money than the former? I don’t think so.
Let’s see a breakdown in what kind of degree these people got. A lot of areas of study are rubbish and don’t lead to well paid jobs.
I’d bet a number of significant factors are in play, including the one Charen posits, but another that should be considered: there isn’t much of a market for majors in victims studies programs.
There’s more to achieving wealth than having a college degree. I rest my case!
Studies need to focus on how to encourage stable marriages and create incentives to stay married. Now the incentives are not to marry and have children outside of marriage.
Also,there are many affirmative action plans for women even though women have more college graduates than men. Does this make sense? Will men be out of the picture soon?
Despite all of the posts basically saying blacks are “too stupid for college” because reasons, almost all students that go are worse off, and virtually all Americans that apply for it are going with less than stellar understanding of the 4 Rs.
Like what is the prize for going thousands into debt for a degree of no value.
Most Black Americans that never go to college are better off financially than the other groups that do go.
Anyone that answers that question will be called racist by the left.
Here’s a better question:
Why must everything be about skin color?
You mean a bachelors in African ‘Studies’ isn’t the path to riches?
A B.S. in engineering beats a Ph.D. in negro grievance studies.
Any degree that contains the word “studies” in it is worthless in the real world.
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