I 

116TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION H. R. 5360 

To require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to collect 

more data on race and wealth, and for other purposes. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

DECEMBER 9, 2019 

Mrs. BEATTY introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 

Committee on Financial Services 

A BILL 

To require the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System to collect more data on race and wealth, and 

for other purposes. 

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Closing the Racial 

5 Wealth Gap Act of 2019’’. 

6 SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 

7 Congress finds that: 

8 (1) Between 1983 and 2016, the median Black 

9 family saw their wealth drop by more than half after 


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1 adjusting for inflation, compared to a 33 percent in2 crease for the median White household. 

3 (2) The Forbes 400 richest Americans own 

4 more wealth than all Black households plus a quar5 ter of Latinx households. 

6 (3) Black families are about 20 times more 

7 likely to have zero or negative wealth (37 percent) 

8 than they are to have $1 million or more in assets 

9 (1.9 percent). 

10 (4) Latinx families are 14 times more likely to 

11 have zero or negative wealth (32.8 percent) than 

12 they are to reach the millionaire threshold (2.3 per13 cent). 

14 (5) White families are equally likely to have 

15 zero or negative wealth (about 15 percent) as they 

16 are to be a millionaire (15 percent). 

17 (6) The rate of home ownership for Black fami18 lies is the same today in 2019 as it was before pas19 sage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 

20 (7) The racial wealth gap is not an accident or 

21 the result of inadvisable financial choices by people 

22 of color, rather it is the result of the centuries of 

23 policies, programs, Supreme Court decisions and in24 stitutional practices that were designed to create 

25 barriers or to strip wealth from people of color. 


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1 (8) Adjustments to Black and Latinx education 

2 rates, homeownership, savings and employment do 

3 not greatly reduce the racial wealth divide due to the 

4 structural underpinnings holding the racial wealth 

5 divide in place. 

6 (9) To understand and address the racial 

7 wealth gap, many experts believe we need federally 

8 funded data collection efforts with the ability to 

9 disaggregate sample sizes by race, ethnicity, tribal 

10 affiliation, and country of birth. 

11 (10) Analytical tools like the ‘‘Racial Wealth 

12 Audit’’ from the Institute on Assets and Social Pol13 icy (IASP) and the ‘‘Racial Equity Toolkit’’ from 

14 the Government Alliance on Racial Equity (GARE) 

15 are needed to provide a framework to assess how 

16 legislation will widen or narrow the racial wealth di17 vide. 

18 (11) Changes in individual behavior will not 

19 close the racial wealth divide, only structural sys20 temic policy change. 

21 SEC. 3. DATA COLLECTION ON RACE AND WEALTH. 

22 Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 241 

23 et seq.) is amended by inserting before paragraph (12) the 

24 following: 


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1 ‘‘(11) DATA COLLECTION ON RACE AND

2 WEALTH.—The Board of Governors of the Federal 

3 Reserve System shall, in carrying out any Survey of 

4 Consumer Finances or Survey of Household Eco5 nomics and Decisionmaking, including the collection 

6 of localized data, collect information on household 

7 assets and debt disaggregated by respondent race, 

8 ethnicity, tribal affiliation, and ancestral origin.’’. 

Æ 


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