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Demographics of Wealth 2018, Essay No. 3: The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall: The Decline of the White Working Class
Abstract: This essay explores the intersection of race, ethnicity and education, which we use as a proxy for class. We examine five measures of well-being between 1989 and 2016, the range spanned by the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances.
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https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/demographics-wealth-9376/bigger-harder-fall-685843
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Bibliographic Information
Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Part of Series: Community Development Publications and Reports
Publication Date: 2018-09
Pages: 22 pages
Note: The Demographics of Wealth is a series of essays written by the staff of the Center for Household Financial Stability (2013-2021). The essays are based on the staff’s analysis of over a quarter-century’s worth of data collected by the Federal Reserve through its Survey of Consumer Finances. The results of the survey provide the most comprehensive picture of American families’ balance sheets and financial behavior over time. The series confirms the conventional wisdom that more education is associated with more income and wealth. But the essays also show that inherited demographic characteristics—your race or ethnicity, your age and birth year, and even your parents’ level of education—profoundly shape the economic and financial opportunities you have and the outcomes you achieve.