Everyone benefits if more Black women are supported in accessing, funding, and completing valuable college education.
February 5, 2022
The gist:
“Structural and systemic racism has long stymied the economic advancement and prosperity of Black communities in America, and we cannot escape the fact that “income and wealth inequality” are race-related issues.
The Stats:
Early and College education are driving forces for (or drags on) success:
- If Black women had also been in positions that better matched their education and skill sets, the productivity boost would have added an overall $507 billion to the world’s biggest economy
- If educational attainment among Black women had kept pace with that of white women from 1960-2019, the U.S. would have generated an additional $107 billion in economic activity
- If the educational and professional gaps between Black and white women had been closed, a Black college-educated female professional would have made $5,000 more in annual wages in 2019. A still-large ($7,600) gap exists even controlling for the quality of education
- The share of white women who received a college degree to that of Black women widened from around five percentage points in the 1940s and 1950s to an astonishing 13 percentage points by 2019
- In 2019, 49.3% of working white women had a college degree, versus 36% for Black women of working age.
Few have been as hurt by the intersecting health, economic, and social crises as Black women. And while systemic racism and the lack of social and economic capital for black people, families and women won’t be overcome in the immediate future, a solution that has been put forth, would be for a “a CBO-like ‘score‘ on the impact legislation would have on the economic feasibility and accessibility to the workforce for women.” A “simple, objective, nonpartisan measure that would equip lawmakers with the requisite tools to assess appropriate proposed legislation and its effect on women in the workforce would go a long way.”
The S&P Global report poses that “the biggest springboard for Black women’s progress is equitable access to education, and truly equal opportunity will come only when we break down the structural and systemic barriers that obstruct Black women from succeeding in the American labor force.”
Connect with the full S&P Report here.
