Abstract
The dramatic and widening gap in household wealth along racial lines in the US reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African Americans. In 2013, Shapiro and his colleagues at the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandéis University published research based on a sample of 1,700 working-age households that were followed over a 25-year period-from 1984 to 2009. This approach offers a unique opportunity to understand what happens to the wealth gap over the course of a generation and the effect of policy and institutional decision-making on how average families accumulate wealth.