August 19, 2022 – In a recent poll from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, NPR, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, researchers found that Black Americans are being disproportionately affected by the rising U.S. inflation rates compared to white Americans.
One of the poll’s findings, detailed in an August 8, 2022 NPR article, indicated that white adults are two times more likely to receive financial help from their parents than Black adults or any other minority. America’s persistent racial wealth gap can also be seen in other findings, Robert Blendon, co-director of the survey and Richard L. Menschel Professor of Public Health and Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis emeritus at Harvard Chan School said in the article. For example, the cost of college tuition or better housing is out of reach for many Black, Latino, and Native American adults. “These minority communities are either going to have to borrow everything in a very risky environment for that, and they don’t have anything to at least help defray some of the costs,” Blendon said.
Another aspect of the poll, discussed in a separate August 8, 2022 NPR article, shows a “staggering” number of respondents reporting inability to access health care during the pandemic. Furthermore, Black respondents reported these obstacles to care at significantly higher rates than white respondents. Mary Findling, assistant director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program and research associate of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard Chan School, said, “What’s really sad is the racial gaps in health care between Black and white Americans has remained, and looking across a broad range of measures, it’s better to be a white patient than a Black patient in America today. And when you just stop to think about that, that’s horrible.”
Read the NPR article: White adults receive the most financial help from older relatives, poll shows
Read the NPR article: A ‘staggering’ number of people couldn’t get care during the pandemic, poll finds