evidence: If Black and white individuals had identical savings and capital gains rates over time–which the research shows they did not–the racial wealth gap today would be about 3 to 1. Simply put, the gap was so large post-Emancipation that even equal earnings and savings rates between Black and white individuals would have resulted in a wealth gap that, though half what it is today, would have Black individuals holding about 30 cents for every $1 held by white individuals. [...] The authors write that their findings cast a spotlight on the fact that today’s Black-white wealth gap is a direct legacy of slavery and the discriminatory institutions that followed it–and likely wouldn’t have entirely closed even with policies that reduced inequities in investment returns and savings among Black and white Americans. Policies that target unequal returns on wealth or savings rates can help close the racial wealth gap, they say, but it could still take several hundred more years for Black wealth to match white wealth.