Housing Market Appreciation and the White-Black Wealth Gap.

ABSTRACT: Real house prices in the United States have risen by 55 percent over the last four decades, driving substantial wealth benefits to homeowners. However, research has not explored how this rise in house prices has affected White-Black wealth gaps, or the mechanisms that may underlie this relationship. Using geocoded longitudinal household-level wealth data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and tract-level house price index data, I estimate that housing market appreciation between 1984 and 2021 explains 70 percent of the increase in the median White-Black wealth gap over this period. I find that most of this effect is due to White-Black gaps in homeownership, with White-Black gaps in house values playing a smaller role. In contrast to recent findings about racialized housing markets, I

SUBMITTER: LaBriola J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12392981 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature