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.
No one reading this, ever sat next to their equal in any classroom, unless it was their identical sibling. No one. We all differ in our complex of aptitudes, motivations, energy, etc. Egalitarianism is the insane enemy of human progress--and always has been. Note: The Greatest Mischief Ever Wrought. The pursuit of equal outcomes from very different individuals is both insane & evil. It focuses the victims on grievances--imagined grievances--never on the best path to prosperity. It is as bad as any addictive narcotic, in its destructive consequences.
Just read a book, The Outliers by Malcomb Gladwell. He makes a convincing argument that several other factors also contribute to success. 1. is how you interact and whether you have learned to stand up for yourself — this is something that Gladwell argues does not happen in enough minority homes.
2. Another factor is staying in a field long enough to become expert at the task. Many people want success immediately but it does not work that way.
Of course the traditional issues as you point out exist and are factors too. It helps to be at the right place with the right skill.
The article says it has to do with marriage and out-of-wedlock births.
“Could it have anything to do with their majors?”
bing bing bing, we have a winner!!
Perhaps the "marriage and out-of-wedlock births" are caused by not having the potential and judgement to compete with their peers who had to meet more rigorous standards to get where they are.
“Could it have anything to do with their majors?”
bing bing bing, we have a winner!!
An old saying: The key to wealth is not how much you earn or how much you save or invest. It is keeping your first wife.
It is not just the stupid who do not understand. The forked tongued Leftist educators have managed to confuse cause & effect among the “educated” population. Look at the different factors the writer discusses. Most are common effects of the actual underlying reality. They are, again, “effects,” not the cause.
I understand that Moochelle’s Ivy League University thesis was about what it was like to be a black student at her Ivy League University.
I don’t think we ever found out what Zero’s thesis was about, except that just like everything else about him, his entire college background is top secret.
They can’t make a living on Anti-American indoctrination and Anti-American propaganda .
What did the article say about majors?
And that didn't require ambition, motivation, and discipline? Seriously?
You think that MS won't require ambition, motivation, and discipline? Seriously? The mere fact that you're pursuing a graduate degree in a meaningful program of study indicates ambition.
..... Because ... Racism.
The pursuit of equal outcomes from very different individuals is both insane & evil.
I developed my ambition, motivation and discipline by serving six years in the US Army, back in the ‘80’s - not in college. I am 52 years old. The reason I am going after my MS has to do with already being at the top of my profession. I now want to move to the executive level and the only way that will ever happen is if I have the MS sheepskin.
The skills needed for the job, I developed those on my own, outside of college.
Good article.
If Blacks are let in with worse records due to affirmative action then of course they will do worse as well when they leave.
And if you bump up every Black to a higher level college than he would normally go to then he is is always in a school where he is below average and discouraged from taking the harder and more lucrative majors.
I can see that...years ago I had a coworker from Nigeria, and I got the impression that he faced the same kind of parasitic “tribal obligation” from extended family any time he went home.
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