Wealth often dictates the opportunities you have, the status of future generations, and your quality of life. In short, wealth can often determine your standing in life and the privileges you possess. The primer to the Bell’s racial wealth gap series explains how Coloradans of color have significantly less wealth than white Coloradans, and illustrates how this gap has roots in historical policy decisions made at the national level.

The first brief in our racial wealth gap series considers the impact of homeownership and credit on wealth, as well as introduces unique statistics pertaining to the state of Colorado disaggregated by race. In doing so, it illustrates the existing disparities in homeownership and credit, the causes of these disparities, and the historical impact homeownership and credit access have had on the racial wealth gap since the Great Depression and the New Deal.

When considering the racial wealth gap, a holistic understanding of wealth is important to developing the right solutions. This means wealth consists of a combination of assets, not just any single asset. Accordingly, this brief introduces a few potential solutions for closing Colorado’s racial wealth gap that specifically target wealth building for individuals and communities of color.

Stay tuned for future pieces that will examine the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration in Colorado, as well as explore the disparities in the labor market affecting the state’s racial wealth gap. In the meantime, these resources offer insight on these issues.

• ThoughtCo’s Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline
• Prison Policy Initiative’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019
• Economic Policy Institute’s Report on Racial Disparities in Employment