Economy
CityLab Daily: Why Can’t We Close the Racial Wealth Gap?
Also: Baltimore’s cannabis stalemate, and why the water sector needs more women leaders.
Keep up with the most pressing, interesting, and important city stories of the day. Sign up for the CityLab Daily newsletter here.
Mind the gap: Scholars have often explained America’s racial wealth disparity by pointing to clear snapshots in history: Slavery, redlining, segregation, and other racist policies allowed whites to accumulate wealth while eliminating wealth opportunities for African Americans. Today, white households have nearly 6.5 times the wealth of black households. But new research finds that while all those initial conditions may have created the wealth gap, it’s been kept alive over the years by unequal income.