Exploring median family wealth in the US (1983-2016)
This interactive visualization tracks median family wealth in the US from 1983 to 2016, filtered by race through a dropdown menu. It combines a scatter plot of yearly data points with vertical bars, using D3.js scales, axes, and transitions to animate changes when switching between White, Black, and Hispanic households. The data, sourced from the Urban Institute and US Census via TidyTuesday, is normalized to 2016 dollars, highlighting racial wealth disparities and the post-2007 recession decline.
AI-generated descriptionExploring median family wealth in the US (1983-2016)
Data
The data originally comes from the Urban Institue & US Census. This was collated into .csv files as part of the #TidyTuesday project.
The above chart explores the median family wealth of US households over the period 1983-2016 split by race.
The figures have been normalized to 2016 rates so as to make them comparable and not be affected by inflation.
Observations
The median White family wealth is almost 8x of that of Black and Hispanic families. Thus, there is a significant disparity in the ditribution of wealth and this has not improved over the years.
From 2007 to 2010, there was a sharp fall in the median family wealth which was most pronounced for White families. This seems to be driven by the 2007-08 housing market crash and the subsequent recession.
Historically, the median family wealth of Black housholds has been higher than that of Hispanic households. However, over the last ten years, this trend seems to be reversing.