Supporting extended family with after-tax dollars depletes black retirement saving

Evidence

The answer, once again, can be found in the tax code, which favors white family structures and the opportunities that go with them. Black families are far more likely than white families to accumulate what researchers call “negative social capital”—a social structure that depletes black wealth and restricts mobility and growth potential. Many black women and men in corporate America stretch their salaries to support extended family members who haven’t had the same wealth-building opportunities; by helping their parents, siblings, or grandparents, each of them reduces their ability to provide for themselves or their children. And they are doing it with after-tax dollars in a tax system that disadvantages most black families. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 389

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘negative social capital’ and links it to the balance-gap mechanism: intra-family support drawn on after-tax income that white structures don’t face.