The 2019 Prosperity Now Scorecard rankings are in. North Carolina placed 41st out of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia in terms of the financial health of residents.
The Scorecard calculates 52 outcome measures such as household income, access to credit, and net worth. This year, for the first time, the Scorecard also factors in racial disparities (the gaps between white residents and residents of color on 26 outcome measures) to arrive at each state’s overall performance.
In an economy that has been described as “booming”, many Americans – especially people of color – remain vulnerable. The Scorecard examines traditionally overlooked data regarding the day-to-day influence of the economy on the average American household.
Some of the Scorecard’s key findings:
- The nation’s racial wealth gap is vast: At the median, black households own only six cents and Latino households own 13 cents for every dollar of white wealth.
- More than one in five jobs in the United States are in a low-wage occupation, meaning median pay is less than the poverty threshold for a family of four.
- Nationwide, 40% of households are liquid-asset poor, lacking sufficient savings to survive at the poverty level for three months if their income was interrupted.
North Carolina’s below-average ranking is influenced by the large gap between white residents and residents of color on a number of economic indicators. For example:
- Black households in North Carolina are twice as likely as white households to have incomes below the
poverty line . - Less than 3% of white
households are unbanked compared with 12% of households of color. - The unemployment rate for
people of color is twice that for white residents.
Stay tuned: Local level data for Charlotte-Mecklenburg will be released later this year. In the meantime, you can follow the conversation about state and national findings using #ProsperityNowScorecard.