The Mortgage Interest Deduction and the White-Black Wealth Gap, 1984-2021

The home mortgage interest deduction (MID) allows homeowners to deduct the interest paid on the first $750,000 of up to two home mortgages from their taxes and costs the Treasury $26 billion per year. MID benefits are greater for households with higher incomes and larger mortgages, thus disproportionately benefiting Whites over Blacks. Sociologists Joe LaBriola and Chinyere Agbai will examine the effects of the MID on the White-Black wealth gap since 1984. They will analyze data from the National Bureau of Economic Research’s TAXISM program for their study.