Exploring median family wealth in the US (1983-2016)

Data

• The data originally comes from the Urban Institue & US Census. This was collated into .csv files as part of the #TidyTuesday project.

• The above chart explores the median family wealth of US households over the period 1983-2016 split by race.

• The figures have been normalized to 2016 rates so as to make them comparable and not be affected by inflation.

Observations

• The median White family wealth is almost 8x of that of Black and Hispanic families. Thus, there is a significant disparity in the ditribution of wealth and this has not improved over the years.

• From 2007 to 2010, there was a sharp fall in the median family wealth which was most pronounced for White families. This seems to be driven by the 2007-08 housing market crash and the subsequent recession.

• Historically, the median family wealth of Black housholds has been higher than that of Hispanic households. However, over the last ten years, this trend seems to be reversing.