August 18, 2015
The Post has an interesting piece on a St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank study which shows that African American and Hispanics with college degrees have far less wealth than their white counterparts. (Stay tuned for CEPR study showing this story with wages.) The study also shows a large decline in wealth for African Americans and Hispanics with college degrees over the last two decades.
It attributes much of this decline to subprime mortgages pushed by lenders during the bubble years:
“But African American and Hispanics were often steered into high-cost home loans that many could not afford once the housing market crashed. Those who managed to stave off a foreclosure still watched the value of their properties took a nosedive, especially if they lived in minority neighborhoods.”
While a subprime loan made it more difficult for homeowners to keep their homes in the crash, the loss of wealth was due to plunging house prices. Even if an African American or Hispanic family bought a house with a traditional fixed rate 30-year mortgage they still would have seen a huge hit to their wealth when the housing bubble collapsed.
This point is important because the warning signs were everywhere for economists and policy analysts to see. However, they chose to ignore them and encouraged minorities to buy homes at bubble-inflated prices where they were virtually guaranteed to see large losses. Unfortunately, most of the people who were involved in setting housing policy during the bubble years are still in the same business today. Most do not appear to have learned much from the experience.
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