I appreciate David Kaiser's willingness to respond to my post. I'm glad that he responded to my feedback in a cordial way because that was my intention as well. .
There seems to be a good explanation for the differences in historical home ownership rates that David Kaiser pointed out in his response. The paper by Collins and Margo looked at subsets of the population when doing home ownership comparisons. Here's an excerpt from their paper:
To be included in the core sample used in this paper, the household head must be male, in
the labor force, not currently enrolled in school, and between the ages of 25 and 64. We focus on
this particular slice of the population because it has been intensively studied by scholars
interested in the long-run evolution of racial differences in income and educational attainment.
Although there are some differences in magnitudes, the fundamental time-series patterns
revealed by the core sample are not changed appreciably by broadening the sample to include all household heads (Appendix Tables 1 and 2).
The numbers used by Zillow and the numbers I quoted from the US Census Bureau use a broader set of households, including those headed by women and people older than 65. It's not surprising that the absolute levels of home ownership quoted by these sources are different.
Black home ownership rates using a broader set of households are available at the St. Louis Fed's FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) web site:
Their data goes back to 1994. Black home ownership rates have never gone above 50% according to their data, let alone as high as the 56% mark that's quoted in the paper by Collins and Margo. A spot check of data points from the two sources show that US Census Bureau numbers are consistently lower. .
I'm not sure how to respond to Samuel Kronen's essay in Quillette. It's a long post and he seems to be trying to counter arguments about various racial gaps that have been made by people like Ta-Nahesi Coates. The discussion of the causes of these gaps is part of a much bigger debate about whether various forms of bias explain these gaps.
When it comes to wealth, Kronen makes the point that wealth is concentrated within a small segment of the population. He then suggests that discussions of racial wealth gaps across the broader distribution aren't valid. The first point is true, but it doesn't offset the significant wealth gaps that take place along the entire distribution. The St. Louis Fed post I quoted makes note of these gaps at various points (e.g,. 25th percentile, 30th percentile, 75th percentile, percentage of the population that are millionaires, percentage of the population with negative net worths, etc.). The US Census Bureau numbers I quoted show similar discrepancies along the entire distribution as well.
Folks can compare the net worths of ultra-wealthy people like Jeff Bezos and Oprah, but that exercise doesn't tell us much about what's happening with average Americans. Many of us would find the differences at various percentiles more interesting.
I appreciate David Kaiser's willingness to respond to my post. I'm glad that he responded to my feedback in a cordial way because that was my intention as well. .
There seems to be a good explanation for the differences in historical home ownership rates that David Kaiser pointed out in his response. The paper by Collins and Margo looked at subsets of the population when doing home ownership comparisons. Here's an excerpt from their paper:
To be included in the core sample used in this paper, the household head must be male, in
the labor force, not currently enrolled in school, and between the ages of 25 and 64. We focus on
this particular slice of the population because it has been intensively studied by scholars
interested in the long-run evolution of racial differences in income and educational attainment.
Although there are some differences in magnitudes, the fundamental time-series patterns
revealed by the core sample are not changed appreciably by broadening the sample to include all household heads (Appendix Tables 1 and 2).
The numbers used by Zillow and the numbers I quoted from the US Census Bureau use a broader set of households, including those headed by women and people older than 65. It's not surprising that the absolute levels of home ownership quoted by these sources are different.
Black home ownership rates using a broader set of households are available at the St. Louis Fed's FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) web site:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOAAAHORUSQ156N
Their data goes back to 1994. Black home ownership rates have never gone above 50% according to their data, let alone as high as the 56% mark that's quoted in the paper by Collins and Margo. A spot check of data points from the two sources show that US Census Bureau numbers are consistently lower. .
I'm not sure how to respond to Samuel Kronen's essay in Quillette. It's a long post and he seems to be trying to counter arguments about various racial gaps that have been made by people like Ta-Nahesi Coates. The discussion of the causes of these gaps is part of a much bigger debate about whether various forms of bias explain these gaps.
When it comes to wealth, Kronen makes the point that wealth is concentrated within a small segment of the population. He then suggests that discussions of racial wealth gaps across the broader distribution aren't valid. The first point is true, but it doesn't offset the significant wealth gaps that take place along the entire distribution. The St. Louis Fed post I quoted makes note of these gaps at various points (e.g,. 25th percentile, 30th percentile, 75th percentile, percentage of the population that are millionaires, percentage of the population with negative net worths, etc.). The US Census Bureau numbers I quoted show similar discrepancies along the entire distribution as well.
Folks can compare the net worths of ultra-wealthy people like Jeff Bezos and Oprah, but that exercise doesn't tell us much about what's happening with average Americans. Many of us would find the differences at various percentiles more interesting.