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Related: About this forumAmericans Are 40 Percent Poorer Than Before the Recession
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/27521-americans-are-40-percent-poorer-than-beforthe-recessionThe Great Recession is officially over, but Americans are still 40% poorer today than they were in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis.
The net worth of American families the difference between the values of their assets, including homes and investments, and liabilities fell to $81,400 in 2013, down slightly from $82,300 in 2010, but a long way off the $135,700 in 2007, according to a new report released on Friday by the nonprofit think-tank Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.
The Great Recession, fueled by the crises in the housing and financial markets, was universally hard on the net worth of American families, the report found.
There is also a dramatic disparity in net worth between races. The median net worth of white households was $141,900 in 2013, down 26% since 2007. It declined by 42% to $13,700 over the same period for Hispanic households and fell by 43% to $11,000 for African-American households. One theory for the wealth gap: White households are more likely than other ethnicities to own stocks directly or indirectly through retirement accounts, the Pew report said.
The wealth of most Americans has stood still. In November 2014, the average weekly wage was $853 versus $833 for November 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But things are improving somewhat when it comes to housing. Nationwide, only 8% of borrowers have homes that are underwater as of October 2014, down from a peak of 35%, or 18 million homes, in February 2011, according to Black Knight Financial Services in Jacksonville, Fla., which tracks mortgage performance. But 8% still impacts 4 million homes.
Stagnant wages and rising property prices dont bode well for first-time buyers without wealthy parents. The homeownership rate for non-Hispanic white households fell to 73.9% in 2013 from 75.3% in 2010, Pew found, and fell to 47.4% in 2013 from 50.6% in 2010 for minorities. It takes an average of 12.5 years to save up a 20% down payment the usual requirement by banks with a personal savings rate of 5.6%, according to real-estate firm RealtyTrac.
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Americans Are 40 Percent Poorer Than Before the Recession (Original Post)
eridani
Dec 2014
OP
Man from Pickens
(1,713 posts)1. so if you had nothing then, and have nothing now...
... then technically, you did better than average
Warpy
(111,256 posts)2. However, if you'd scrimped and saved to buy a house between 2000 and 2006
you got robbed. There is no other word for it.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)3. It's the second quintile that took the big hit
The first and third quintiles are more or less where they were a decade ago (and the fourth and fifth are much richer), but the second quintile lost half of their net worth.
http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20distribution%202000%20to%202011.pdf
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)4. Yup,
seems about right to me.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)5. so why aren't they in toe-curling orgasms over the prospects of further cuts, huh? probably racism