New Data Resource Focuses on Racial Wealth Gap

Source: Route Fifty By Molly Bolan, Assistant Editor, Route Fifty

A tool launched by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative Thursday aims to provide better access to data about racial wealth inequities in the United States. 

With interactive maps and graphs, the Black Wealth Data Center, or BWDC, allows users to compare data across race, sex, education and location and explore topics including employment, homeownership, assets and debt.  

The Greenwood Initiative is a national program that aims to accelerate “the pace of wealth accumulation for Black individuals and families and addressing systemic underinvestment in Black communities across the U.S,” according to a release from the organization.

The BWDC website allows users to sift through data on a national level or dive into specific zip codes, making it a powerful tool to help elected officials better understand their communities and constituencies, the center’s executive director Natalie Evans Harris told Route Fifty. 

Data about race and ethnicity has long been difficult to access in part because the data sets sit in many different places and collection standards vary across organizations, Evans Harris said. Working with several sets is important to better understand the challenge of racial wealth inequity, she added. 

“What we do know is that no one or two data sets alone can tell the full comprehensive story, especially when you're talking about something like racial wealth,” Evans Harris said. 

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