White families, on the other hand, have a median net wealth of $549,200, while Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander families are at $305,000. <\/p>\n
It also highlighted the power of homeownership in a part of the country where extraordinarily high real estate prices are making the dream of home buying increasingly unattainable, especially among the state\u2019s Black and Latino population.<\/p>\n
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Those racial and ethnic disparities reflect centuries of discrimination in societal norms, financial practices, and public policy that have restricted the accumulation of wealth in Black and Latino households, research shows. Even in Massachusetts, where the overall median net worth is $374,000, deep structural inequities persist. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the proverbial tale of two economies,\u201d said Jim Rooney, president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. <\/p>\n
The new Boston Fed study is based on a 2025 survey of more than 5,000 Massachusetts residents, thought to be the first statewide effort to provide a comprehensive picture of families\u2019 financial situations by examining assets and debts in a single dataset. Wealth is critical for families dealing with unexpected expenses and trying to invest for the future, according to the report, and this data can help the region \u201cmove toward an economy in which everyone has a chance to participate and contribute.\u201d <\/p>\n
The researchers determined net wealth by examining people\u2019s debt compared to their liquid assets such as savings accounts, mutual funds, and cash, as well as the equity people have in their homes and cars.<\/p>\n
Along with revealing stark racial wealth gaps, the new report highlights factors associated with high net wealth, including living in a rural area, owning a home, and having a graduate degree.<\/p>\n
City-dwelling families have $110,000 in median net wealth, for example, compared with rural families with $465,000. This, in part, is because of the higher number of renters in cities.<\/p>\n
Overall, wealth is growing for people across the country, but it\u2019s growing much faster for people who had wealth in previous generations. Nationwide, according to the 2022 Federal Reserve\u2019s Survey of Consumer Finances<\/a>, median wealth was roughly $45,000 for Black families, $62,000 for Latinos, $285,000 for white people, and $536,000 for Asians.<\/p>\n \u201cWealth begets wealth,\u201d said Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. \u201cAnd the historic denial of wealth to groups comes out in the wash of current data, not to mention present-day discrimination as well. If your grandfather owned a home, it\u2019s much more likely that you would have a nest egg to pass on to children.\u201d <\/p>\n Samuel Gomes Rodrigues Jr.\u2019s parents own their home in Brockton, and the 29-year-old Northeastern University security guard is living with them because he can\u2019t afford a place of his own. His take-home pay is $800 a week, but it doesn\u2019t cover his expenses, including high health care costs and student loan debt. He even rations his medication to make it last longer.<\/p>\n Black and Latino residents have long been blamed for their own financial situations, he said: \u201cYou constantly hear that the plight of people of color is because of people of color.\u201d <\/p>\n Homeownership is perhaps the single greatest driving force behind the wide racial wealth gaps in the state. <\/p>\n Some 70 percent of white households here own their homes, according to census data, compared with 39 percent of Black households and 32 percent of Latino households. <\/p>\n Those disparities, said Tom Callahan, executive director of the Partnership for Financial Equity, trace back decades to racist lending policies like redlining, the practice by which banks refused to issue home loans in neighborhoods with large minority populations, and racial covenants that prevented homes from being purchased by nonwhite families.<\/p>\n \u201cNow you have many white families who got into homeownership decades ago and are sitting on a million-dollar house that they purchased for a tenth of that price,\u201d said Callahan. \u201cAnd if you weren\u2019t part of that wave \u2014 as many Black and Hispanic households were not \u2014 you\u2019re relegated to being a renter, and there\u2019s no home equity to gain from being a long-term renter.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, roughly 40 percent of renters in Massachusetts held zero or negative net wealth, according to the study, compared with just 1 percent of homeowning families. <\/p>\n James Jennings, an emeritus professor of urban planning at Tufts University, said closing the racial wealth gap cannot simply be defined by raising homeownership rates. That\u2019s important, he said, but policies like redlining also had broader effects, such as creating economically segregated neighborhoods across the state. <\/p>\n \u201cHave we solved the racial wealth gap if the Black homeownership rate reaches 65 percent?\u201d Jennings said. \u201cI think it is far more layered than that. Solving the racial wealth gap means boosting community wealth in other ways, too, like improving the quality of education, and the quality of jobs and health care.\u201d<\/p>\n More immediately, Boston Fed data show more than a third of families in Massachusetts don\u2019t have enough money on hand to cover a $400 emergency expense. Among Black and Latino families, two-thirds can\u2019t afford that unexpected cost.<\/p>\n Even Black families\u2019 overall median net worth of $7,800 isn\u2019t enough to start a business or get a college degree without going into debilitating debt, said Nicole Obi, president of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, which started in response to the 2015 Fed wealth study. <\/p>\n Nearly a third of Black families have zero or negative wealth, which means they can\u2019t even afford a simple car repair.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not positioning these populations for success,\u201d Obi said. \u201cThat will ultimately bode very poorly for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.\u201d <\/p>\n The immense gap between Latino and white wealth is disconcerting, said Betty Francisco, chief executive of Boston Impact Initiative, a nonprofit impact investment fund. And it\u2019s not just an issue in Massachusetts. Latino wealth as a share of national wealth shrank by over 20 percent from 2016 to 2025, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Americans for Tax Fairness<\/a>. <\/p>\n Latino families are disproportionately working class and have been hit hard by the rising cost of living and stagnant wages, said Pablo Willis, director of Latino Outreach at AFT. Many Latinos are single parents, and a number of them face language and financial literacy challenges, added Belinda Rom\u00e1n, an economics professor at St. Mary\u2019s University in San Antonio. Immigration status is also a barrier, particularly under the Trump administration, as are reductions in social safety nets.<\/p>\n \u201cThose programs gave people support in a way that allowed them to participate in the economy more fully, and now they can\u2019t,\u201d Roman said. <\/p>\n Last year, the financial well-being of most adults held steady, but declined for Black adults, who were more likely to experience layoffs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.<\/a> The biggest decline among Black people was for those who are college-educated.<\/p>\n President Trump\u2019s signature economic legislation, passed last summer, could also widen the wealth gap, according to a Boston Foundation report<\/a>. The bill cut Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants, which will further undermine struggling families\u2019 incomes by forcing them to pay more for health care, food, and education. At the same time, the report states, the law\u2019s tax benefits are a boon to wealthy families. <\/p>\n But with more attention being paid to people\u2019s economic struggles, there\u2019s hope that wealth disparities will come under more scrutiny.<\/p>\n Conversations about affordability and the struggle of the middle class to make ends meet \u2014 \u201cimpacting people who we deem have made it in society\u201d \u2014 have opened the door to addressing structural barriers to building wealth, said Perry, of the Brookings Institution. <\/p>\n The data from the Boston Fed also helps. <\/p>\n The report reveals wide socioeconomic disparities within ethnic groups, including Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, for instance, whose net wealth was $14,200 at the 25th percentile \u2014 meaning a quarter of this population has net wealth at or below this amount.<\/p>\n \u201cOftentimes we have to kind of swim against the dominant misconception of the model minority \u2014 that most Asians are highly educated and have a lot of wealth,\u201d said Angie Liou, executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation, which serves families in Greater Boston. <\/p>\n Addressing the structural barriers that contribute to these wealth gaps takes commitments from the federal government, she said. Think back to the stimulus checks during the pandemic: They went out quickly and helped alleviate poverty during a global crisis when millions of people were out of work.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re taught that you have to rely on yourself and your family to save for everything,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not unimaginable that the country can come up with sweeping solutions that can get at a lot of these structural problems.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was produced by the Globe\u2019s Money, Power, Inequality<\/a> team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter here<\/a>. <\/p>\n Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com<\/a>. Follow her @ktkjohnston<\/a>. Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him @andrewnbrinker<\/a>. Mara Kardas-Nelson can be reached at mara.kardas-nelson@globe.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AUUCQCBBMQI6JDPHCI6YYOHDCI.jpg\")
The Boston skyline is seen from the top floor of the historic Alvah Kittredge house built in 1836 in Roxbury, on Aug. 9, 2014.Zack Wittman for The Boston Globe<\/p>\n