Intergenerational family financial transfers for college are heavily skewed toward whites

Evidence

In a study that tracked college-educated households over a twenty-four-year period, researchers found that white heads of household were far more likely to have both received money for college from their own parents, and to have provided college funding to their children. Sixty percent of white heads of households reported that their parent paid for college, and 64 percent of white households reported that they had helped pay for their children’s education, contributing on average close to 73,500. By contrast, only 37 percent of black heads of households reported that their parent had helped pay for college, and 34 percent reported that they had helped pay for their children’s education. These parents also contributed less—just over 16,000 on average. As a result, black graduates end up owing more than their white peers, a disparity that only increases over time. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 302

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘family financial transfers’ concept that recurs throughout the book as the tax-law lens through which she reads the wealth gap.
• DEFINE: Establishes ‘family financial transfers’ as the tax-law term for parents/grandparents paying for college.