evidence: DURHAM, N.C. – In his 2024 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden said the country’s racial wealth gap is the smallest it has been in 20 years. However, a new paper from three collaborators at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center for Social Equity at Duke University provides an important correction: The modern racial wealth gap is in fact growing, in large part because of the cumulative impact of the country’s racial history, and intergenerational transfers of wealth from older generations to younger ones. [...] Why is this? A traditional view of how the racial wealth gap has developed — and might be alleviated — centers on human capital. It posits that Black households have lower levels of educational attainment, which in turn generates lower earnings and lower savings that can lead to wealth. By this logic, to eliminate the wealth gap, one must first eliminate the earnings gap.