The financial stability of America’s working families is increasingly divided by race and ethnicity, says a study released this week by The Working Poor Families Project.
“In 2013, working families headed by racial/ethnic minorities were twice as likely to be poor or low-income (47 percent) compared with non-Hispanic whites (23 percent),” the study states, “a gap that has increased since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007.”
The report, which relies on new census data, contends that “less than one-fourth of white and Asian American working families were low-income, compared with nearly half of African American and American Indian working families and 55 percent of Latino working families. About 34 percent of families headed by ‘other’ race groups, which includes people identifying with multiple races, were low-income.”
From a macro-economic point of view, “these trends are important because some of the fastest-growing groups—especially Latinos—are also the most vulnerable, lagging behind other groups on measures of economic well-being. In 2013, there were 32.6 million working families in the United States, and 10.6 million—nearly one-third— were low-income, meaning their total income fell below 200 percent of the official poverty level.”
The full report can be read here.
[Vinnie Rotondaro is NCR national correspondent. His email address is vrotondaro@ncronline.org.]
