Unequal Early Adulthoods: Racial and Ethnic Wealth Disparities during the Great Recession

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study identifies socioeconomic factors that contribute to wealth advantages or disadvantages across ethnoracial groups in early adulthoods during the Great Recession. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that current and childhood social class partially explain racial disparities in debt, assets, and assistance with housing payments but do little to account for disparities in homeownership. These results underscore the life course perspective that wealth inequality disrupts the maintenance of successful adulthood for minority racial groups. Ethnoracial disparities in homeownership are a critical lever of the wealth-race gap later in adulthood.