Data and Code for: Race and Economic Well-Being in the United States

We construct a measure of consumption-equivalent welfare for Black and White Americans. Our statistic incorporates life expectancy, incarceration, consumption, leisure, and inequality. Based on this incomplete list of factors, welfare for Black Americans was 40% of that for White Americans in 1984 and rose to 59% by 2022. On the one hand, there has been remarkable progress for Black Americans: the level of their consumption-equivalent welfare increased by a factor of 3.5 over the last 38 years when aggregate consumption per person only doubled. On the other hand, despite this remarkable progress, the welfare gap in 2022 remains disconcertingly large at 41%, much larger than the 16% gap in consumption per person.