minor in Golf and Glory Holes.
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.
What were their majors? You need to compare them on the basis of jobs and not lump everyone together. What percentage became lawyers, doctors, software engineers, physicists, etc.
I’m White ,so why am I a Zero on the Wealthy Scale ?
Except for Sharpton and Jackson.
That requirement needs to be fairly loose ... Lots of people with natural science degrees (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, mathematics) end up working as engineers of some sort, not strictly speaking as scientists.
Mellanic Studies vs. Petroleum Engineering, LOL
minor in Golf and Glory Holes.
That African ‘Studies’ major needs to have a complementary minor in Sub-Saharan Homoerotic Dance to be of any real value in today’s workplace.
How many women, black or white, go into the sciences and technical fields? If 66% of black college graduates are females, the comparison to whites becomes more skewed.
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.
The issue seems to be social and cultural, which may explain the differences in financial outcomes.
Don’t forget appearance. We need someone to start a ‘Pull Up Your Pants And Put A Belt On’ drive.
Fat Al Sharpton is a college dropout.
Je$$e Jack$on has a BS degree in sociology.
Both are statistical outliers. IMO.
Success is composed of three pillars
Skills or education
Ambition or motivation
Discipline
A college degree only addresses one of the three
RE: Studies need to focus on how to encourage stable marriages and create incentives to stay married.
Charles Murray wrote two books. One titled “Losing Ground”, the other titled “Coming Apart”, explaining ON AVERAGE, how black AND white people drop behind on the wealth scale.
He was invited to talk about it on college campuses and was quickly SHOUTED DOWN by students when he arrived in various campuses. He wasn’t even allowed to speak ( see Middlebury College ).
Yeah, I forgot to add that Minor. It would be a given that you’d need that.
RE: Fat Al Sharpton is a college dropout.
He is the Rev. Al Sharpton. What seminary did he graduate from?
For some blacks, college is not an equalizer. For some whites, college is not an equalizer. So what? What colleges were involved? What majors were involved? What were class standings? What grades were made? So many variables other than race. Poor question and answered poorly.
A worthwhile program of studies leading to a college degree addresses all three of your pillars.
I'm mildly curious as to what college degrees you hold, and what major programs of study lead to those degrees.
How about the fact that many go to a Historic Black College that is very inferior to a simple junior college? Some of these schools use text books written for high school freshmen.
Thank the first black president for this one. Elections have consequences.
Seminary? None, that I'm aware of or that Wikipedia (hah hah hah) mentions.
Jesse Jackson is a Chicago Theological Seminary dropout.
“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.”
Johnnie Taylor: Cheaper To Keep Her,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdwg96osge8
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.