well new data highlights a troubling trend in New Jersey showing the racial wealth gap between white residents and that of blacks and Latinos has doubled since before the pandemic from a roughly $300,000 gap to more than 600,000 the report from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice says the statistics are stunning given that New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the country but that wealth isn't shared equally here to dig into the report is Laura Sullivan director of the institute's economic justice program laura good to talk to you walk us through some of the numbers some of the comparisons that you were able to make between say you know retirement savings net worth between these groups of folks yeah thank you so much for having me it's it's really important um to understand that New Jersey is one of the most prosperous states in the nation but unfortunately um that uh prosperity is not equitably shared so our study really focused on uh wealth inequalities because wealth is so important for long-term economic security and we found that uh white households at the median here in New Jersey have about $640,000 compared to about 20 a little less than $20,000 for black and Latino families in addition to that there's persistent disparities in the things that contribute to wealth such as home ownership and retirement accounts we find that um about 3/4ers a little over threequarters of white families in New Jersey own their homes compared to about 40% of uh black and Latino families and retirement the second largest savings for most families um we see additional disparities um with black and Latino families having substantially fewer retirement savings uh from employment uh than their white peers so if it's not a challenge of resources as you say we were a wealthy state then what is it why are we seeing gaps like this well how did we get here exactly we have a long history of um policies that have supported wealth building for white families and unfortunately uh families of color have not had access to those same benefits um so from early in the 20th century we saw uh redlinining and racially restrictive covenants uh to the more modern day during the Great Recession we saw predatory lending targeted at uh homeowners of color um so even for um the homeowners of color who were able to purchase their homes they saw greater foreclosures greater wealth loss um during the Great Recession and we still have uh persistent barriers uh in terms of fair lending um and appraisal discrimination which we've worked to combat um all contributing to the fact that um families of color benefit less financially from home ownership uh than their white peers even when they are able to become homeowners are there policies or recommendations that you all in going through that data um are saying hey this is where the priority needs to be or this is something that might actually help make a dent in this absolutely so we know um that during the pandemic we really saw these inequalities um be exacerbated uh by the changes during the pandemic some of our earlier research highlighted uh that from jobs to health to home ownership um we saw the pandemic exacerbate our existing inequalities and unfortunately we didn't do enough to address supply and access to home ownership um and we've done you know we've made some moves as I mentioned um appraisal discrimination we've uh passed legislation to combat that we've uh seen a first generation home ownership program get implemented in the state but the state really needs to do uh even more to um combat appraisal um discrimination and other um factors that contribute to uh disparities in home ownership is is that home ownership piece Laura the biggest in terms of creating any type of wealth generational wealth and where we see the biggest disparities home ownership really is a huge piece of this and so we think um expanding access to home ownership uh is going to be um really important um but we also um think that this needs to be a comprehensive approach to uh addressing wealth disparities um we've looked at a number of different factors that lead to our current wealth disparities from student loans which disproportionately affect u black families uh to um uh intergenerational wealth because wealth is really passed from generation to generation uh the policies that we've had for generations that were not accessible uh for wealth building for families of color uh lead to disparities today and so we're supporting a New Jersey Baby Bonds program as well as the National Program to give a wealth endowment to lowwealth families and uh we have um convened the New Jersey reparations council which will be looking at comprehensive and reparative policies uh moving forward and to be released uh later this year laura Sullivan is with the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice the report is called The Two New Jerseys: A Deepening Divide laura thank you so much thank you so much for having me [Music]