Wealth by Race: The Racial Wealth Gap in America (2026 Data)

The median white family in America holds 9 times more wealth than the median Black family and 4.2 times more than the median Hispanic family, based on the public-data tables of the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances. Measured in dollars, the gap between the median white and median Black family (about $296,000 in 2025) is wider than in any earlier Survey of Consumer Finances since 1989. The gap shows up in every income group in the Survey of Consumer Finances data below. This article presents the full data picture across net worth, homeownership, income, retirement savings, student debt, and inheritance.

Key figure: Median net worth — White: $332,100 | Asian: $677,400 (our calculation) | Hispanic: $79,900 | Black: $36,400. The gap reflects many factors, including differences in homeownership, retirement access, wages, and intergenerational transfers, rather than any single one.

Median Net Worth by Race

Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2025 historic tables based on public data (Table 4, “Family net worth, by selected characteristics of families”), 2025 dollars, published October 2026. The Fed’s tables show four groups, with Asian families inside “Other or multiple race” (median $205,000, mean $1,013,500). The Asian row and the “Other/Multiracial, non-Asian” row are wealthvieu calculations from the Fed’s public SCF data, which includes a separate Asian code.

The median white family has 9× the wealth of the median Black family and 4.2× the wealth of the median Hispanic family. Between the 2022 and 2025 surveys, median net worth fell 25% for Black families and rose 18% for Hispanic families and 7% for white families, after inflation (our calculation from the Fed’s public tables). In the Fed’s own report the White–Black ratio is the largest since 2016, while the White–Hispanic ratio is the smallest on record in the modern SCF. Mean (average) figures are much higher for all groups due to concentration at the top of the wealth distribution; median figures better represent the typical family.

Wealth Gap Over Time

The Black-white median wealth ratio improved from 6.0% in 1989 to 15.5% in 2022 before falling to 11.0% in 2025. In dollar terms, the gap between the two medians is wider in 2025 than in any earlier survey in the table below.

All values in 2025 dollars. Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2025 historic tables based on public data, Table 4 (all survey years 1989–2025 restated in 2025 dollars by the Fed). The ratio column is our calculation.

The housing crash and slow recovery hit minority families hardest: between 2007 and 2013 the median Black family’s wealth fell 45% and the median Hispanic family’s 42%, against 26% for white families (our calculation from the Fed’s public tables). In the Fed’s 2016 survey data, housing made up a larger share of assets for Black (37%) and Hispanic (39%) homeowners than for White homeowners (32%).

Homes, Retirement Accounts and Businesses

Homeownership and retirement accounts are key channels through which families build wealth, and business ownership is far more common higher up the income distribution. Gaps in who owns these assets are part of the wealth gap:

Source: Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, public data (2025 dollars), our calculation. Race or ethnicity of the survey respondent. Median balances are for families that have the asset.

In 2025, 74.5% of White families owned their home, against 46.5% of Black and 52.2% of Hispanic families. Black and Hispanic homeowners also tend to hold less equity, reflecting lower home values and later purchases. The retirement-account gap is as large: nearly two-thirds of White families have a 401(k), IRA or similar account, against about a third of Black and Hispanic families.

The Legacy of Redlining

Redlining, the practice of rating minority neighborhoods as hazardous for lending that federal housing agencies adopted in the 1930s, cut many Black families off from mortgages for decades. The Fair Housing Act banned the practice in 1968, but a Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago study of the 1930s redlining maps found they led to lower homeownership rates, house values and rents, and to more racial segregation, in later decades.

Income Gap by Race

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2025 (P60-289), Figure 1. Race groups are householders reporting that race alone; Hispanic households can be of any race. The percentage column is our calculation.

Income differences explain only part of the wealth gap. In each income group shown below, White families hold more wealth than Black or Hispanic families with similar incomes.

Student Debt Gap

Black families are the most likely to carry student debt: about 25.2% of Black families had student loans in 2025, against 19.3% of White and 16.2% of Hispanic families.

Inheritance and Intergenerational Transfers

Inheritance is one of the largest single contributors to the racial wealth gap: the wealth you start adult life with is heavily shaped by your parents’ and grandparents’ wealth.

Source: Federal Reserve, “Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances,” FEDS Notes, September 2020 (2019 dollars).

White families are about three times as likely as Black families, and four times as likely as Hispanic families, to have received an inheritance, and far more expect one in future.

Business Ownership Gap

Owning a business is far more common higher up the income distribution. In 2025, 16% of White families owned all or part of a business, against 7.3% of Black and 9.6% of Hispanic families, and the typical business owned by a White family was worth more (a median of $149,000, against $86,000 for Black and $56,000 for Hispanic business owners). Startups owned by people of color are less likely than white-owned startups to receive funding from lenders, and they often rely on the owner’s personal funds or money from friends and family.

Wealth Gap at Every Income Level

The racial wealth gap is not a product of income differences alone. At the same income level, Black and Hispanic families hold substantially less wealth than White families, reflecting differences in homeownership, inheritance and retirement savings:

Source: Federal Reserve, 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, public data (2025 dollars), our calculation. Income groups are percentiles of all families’ income. About 100 or fewer Black and Hispanic families were surveyed in each of the top two groups, so those figures are approximate.

The gap is widest in relative terms at the bottom of the income distribution and narrows toward the upper-middle, but it does not close, and it widens again among the top 20% of earners. A Black family in the 60th–80th income percentile has a median net worth about the same as a White family one income group lower.

Related Data

• Average Income by Race — detailed wage and household income breakdown
• Wealth Inequality in America — the wealth gap by income percentile
• Generational Wealth Gap — how wealth differs by generation
• Economic Mobility by State — which states offer the best upward mobility
• Cost of Being Poor — the financial penalties for low-income households
• Homeownership Rate by State — state-level data on who owns homes

Part of our net worth guide.

Written by WealthVieu

WealthVieu researches and writes data-driven personal finance guides using primary sources including the IRS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve, and Census Bureau.