Title: Demographic trends and economic well-being | Pew Research Center
Headings: 1. Demographic trends and economic well-being
1. Demographic trends and economic well-being
Blacks still trail whites in college completion
Black-white income gap remains large
Blacks more than twice as likely as whites to be poor
A growing wealth gap between blacks and whites
Blacks significantly less likely than whites to be homeowners
Blacks twice as likely as whites to be unemployed
Non-marital births more than twice as common among blacks as whites
Just over half of black children live with a single parent
Marriage rate decline particularly steep among blacks
Facts are more important than ever

Content: While blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to be living in poverty, this actually reflects a marked improvement since the mid-1970s when blacks were almost four times as likely as whites to be poor. And the white-black gap in high school completion rates has almost disappeared since the 1960s, though blacks are still significantly less likely than whites to graduate from college. While education is widely viewed as the key to upward mobility for all races, the Pew Research Center analysis finds that the benefits of schooling often flow in unequal measure to blacks relative to whites. For example, among those with a bachelor’s degree, blacks earn significantly less than whites ($82,300 for black householders vs. $106,600 for whites). In fact, the income of blacks at all levels of educational attainment lags behind that of their white counterparts. Similar racial disparities across educational levels occur across measures of social well-being and family structure. For example, about nine-in-ten (92%) white women with a bachelor’s degree who recently gave birth were married, a proportion that drops to 60% among new black mothers with a similar level of education. Taken together, these findings suggest that educational differences alone cannot fully explain the black-white gaps in economic outcomes or family structure. The remainder of this chapter explores major differences in social and economic well-being across racial and ethnic groups, with particular focus on the persistence in the disparities between blacks and whites in recent decades. The first section examines in greater depth racial differences in educational attainment.