WASHINGTON — As Congress and the White House wrestle whether to
raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans, a new analysis of
Census data shows that the wealth gaps between whites and blacks
and Hispanics widened dramatically during the recession. The
analysis by the Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, found
that from 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell 66
percent among Hispanic households and 53 percent among black
households, compared with a 16 percent decline among white
households. Those declines increased the wealth gap between
white and minority households to the largest since the census
began collecting such data in 1984. The ratio of wealth for
whites to blacks, for instance, is now roughly 20 to 1, compared
to 12 to 1 in the first survey 25 years ago and 7 to 1 in 1995,
when a booming economy lifted many low-income Americans into the
middle class. The wealth ratio for whites to Hispanics was 18 to
1 in 2009, also up from 7 to 1 in 1995, the Pew analysis found.
The declines from th