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. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Closing the Racial 
Wealth Gap Act of 2019’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds that: 
(1) Between 1983 and 2016, the median Black 
family saw their wealth drop by more than half after 
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adjusting for inflation, compared to a 33 percent in-
crease for the median White household. 
(2) The Forbes 400 richest Americans own 
more wealth than all Black households plus a quar-
ter of Latinx households. 
(3) Black families are about 20 times more 
likely to have zero or negative wealth (37 percent) 
than they are to have $1 million or more in assets 
(1.9 percent). 
(4) Latinx families are 14 times more likely to 
have zero or negative wealth (32.8 percent) than 
they are to reach the millionaire threshold (2.3 per-
cent). 
(5) White families are equally likely to have 
zero or negative wealth (about 15 percent) as they 
are to be a millionaire (15 percent). 
(6) The rate of home ownership for Black fami-
lies is the same today in 2019 as it was before pas-
sage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 
(7) The racial wealth gap is not an accident or 
the result of inadvisable financial choices by people 
of color, rather it is the result of the centuries of 
policies, programs, Supreme Court decisions and in-
stitutional practices that were designed to create 
barriers or to strip wealth from people of color. 
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(8) Adjustments to Black and Latinx education 
rates, homeownership, savings and employment do 
not greatly reduce the racial wealth divide due to the 
structural underpinnings holding the racial wealth 
divide in place. 
(9) To understand and address the racial 
wealth gap, many experts believe we need federally 
funded data collection efforts with the ability to 
disaggregate sample sizes by race, ethnicity, tribal 
affiliation, and country of birth. 
(10) Analytical tools like the ‘‘Racial Wealth 
Audit’’ from the Institute on Assets and Social Pol-
icy (IASP) and the ‘‘Racial Equity Toolkit’’ from 
the Government Alliance on Racial Equity (GARE) 
are needed to provide a framework to assess how 
legislation will widen or narrow the racial wealth di-
vide. 
(11) Changes in individual behavior will not 
close the racial wealth divide, only structural sys-
temic policy change. 
SEC. 3. DATA COLLECTION ON RACE AND WEALTH. 
Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 241 
et seq.) is amended by inserting before paragraph (12) the 
following: 
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‘‘(11) DATA
COLLECTION
ON
RACE
AND 
WEALTH.—The Board of Governors of the Federal 
Reserve System shall, in carrying out any Survey of 
Consumer Finances or Survey of Household Eco-
nomics and Decisionmaking, including the collection 
of localized data, collect information on household 
assets and debt disaggregated by respondent race, 
ethnicity, tribal affiliation, and ancestral origin.’’. 
Æ 
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