The Colors of Poverty: Why Racial and Ethnic Disparities Persist

Forty years after dismantling legalized discrimination in the United States, racial disparities in poverty remain disturbingly high. In 2001, 22.7 percent of blacks and 21.4 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to only 9.9 percent of whites and 10.2 percent of Asians and Pacific Islanders. Racial disparities also persist in poverty related outcomes such as education, health, and incarceration. Although widely acknowledged, these disparities are often taken for granted or left unexamined, perhaps because of an unwillingness to address racial and ethnic differences, or an assumption that such disparities can be attributed to racism alone. However, at a time when the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States is changing so rapidly, it is more important than ever to understand what drives these inequalities and whether racial and ethnic disparities will endure as the country changes.

With support from the Foundation, David Harris and Ann Chih Lin will organize a conference addressing racial disparities in poverty. The conference will result in a volume broken into three sets of chapters. The first will reassess the role of mechanisms traditionally used to explain poverty and racial disparities in poverty, such as discrimination, culture, and public policy. The second set of chapters will examine the common structural explanations for the persistence of poverty - principally, segmented labor markets and ghetto neighborhoods. The third set of chapters will look at factors related to poverty, such as social capital, education, and health, and how racial disparities in these areas cause, and are caused by, poverty.