Thursday, 24 September 2020 _Inequities in education, housing, wages and business investment between Black and White Americans over the past 20 years have cost the United States $16 trillion, new research concludes.
The study by Citigroup released this week is the latest in a body of studies that aim to quantify the economic effect of systemic racism.
In its study, Citigroup said that Black workers have lost $113 billion in potential wages during the past two decades because they were not able to obtain a college degree.
And because Black applicants could not take out home loans, the housing market lost $218 billion in sales, the study noted.
In addition, since Black entrepreneurs could not have access to bank loans, nearly $13 trillion in business revenue never flowed into the economy, according to the study.
And finally, the US could earn $5 trillion in gross domestic product within the next five years if those gaps and others were closed today, the study predicted.
"Racial inequality has always had an outsized cost, one that was thought to be paid only by underrepresented groups," Citigroup Banking Chair Raymond McGuire said in a statement. "What this report underscores is that this tariff is levied on us all."