{"id":2513,"date":"2010-05-19T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=2513"},"modified":"2010-05-19T09:09:46","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T08:09:46","slug":"the-racial-divide-in-the-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=2513","title":{"rendered":"The racial divide in the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As explained in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2010\/may\/17\/white-people-95000-richer-black\">this article<\/a>, a report released this week by Brandeis University in Massachusetts reveals that a typical white American family is now five times richer than its  African-American counterpart of the same class.<\/p>\n<p>White  families typically have assets worth $100,000 (\u00a369,000), up from $22,000  in the mid-1980s. African-American families&#8217; assets stand at just  $5,000, up from around $2,000.<\/p>\n<p>This racial divide is part of a wider economic divide. Today, the richest 1% of the US population owns close to 40% of its  wealth. The top 25% of US households own 87%.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably the best way of measuring income inequality is through the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gini_coefficient  \">Gini   coefficient<\/a>.\u00a0 On this measure, the USA scores 40. 8 as set out <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_countries_by_income_equality   \">here<\/a>. This\u00a0 is an even higher value of the coefficient than that for  the UK which is 36 &#8211; that is, income inequality is even sharper<\/p>\n<p>However, as well as the current level of the Gini coefficient, one  needs  to look at the change in the coefficient. In both the USA and the  UK, the  figure is rising (that is, inequality is increasing) but, in the States, the  rate is growing even faster than in the UK as illustrated <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gini_coefficient#US_income_Gini_indices_over_time\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As explained in this article, a report released this week by Brandeis University in Massachusetts reveals that a typical white American family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class. White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (\u00a369,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families&#8217; assets stand at just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2528,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}