Good news on Minnesota racial gaps — and that's no typo

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

A front page Star Tribune story on Christmas Day delivered a pleasant surprise — a rare bit of good news about racial disparities in Minnesota.

A steady stream of discouragements has flowed in recent years about our state suffering large, even nation-leading racial gaps in many measures of well-being — from income to employment to test scores to homeownership to incarceration to foster care placement of children and more.

But in "Racial income gap gets smaller" (Dec. 25) we learned that "median income for Minnesota's Black households jumped about 43% in inflation-adjusted dollars in the past five years — the most of any racial or ethnic group, according to American Community Survey [Census] data released this fall."

As a result, wrote business reporter Kavita Kumar, "Minnesota is finally seeing some narrowing in one of its stubbornly large racial disparities."

It's welcome news. And, on its face, it's somewhat puzzling news. The period measured, 2016-21, brought Donald Trump's tumultuous, racially charged presidency and aftermath, a historic pandemic fueling major economic and social dislocations, civil unrest and a violent crime surge battering particularly minority communities across America (and particularly in Minnesota), soaring inflation and, well, other unsettling developments that wouldn't exactly have constituted anybody's recommended formula for producing a sudden burst of progress on racial equality.

But economies are complicated. Societies are complicated. People are complicated. Change, good or bad, is often easier to measure than to convincingly explain.

A little deeper digging into the new census data suggests a few trends that could be part of what has been happening to help narrow Minnesota's income gap, while leaving just why those trends are happening largely mysterious.

The income gap, let's be clear, remains large. But it has closed impressively. In 2016, the census data shows, the median income of a Black Minnesota household (inflation-adjusted) was only about 49% of the median white household's income. By 2021, it was 59%.

The gap for Hispanic households narrowed as well, with median incomes rising from 67% of the white household level in 2016 to 79% in 2021.

The news gets even better when we dig further and compare households in light of key characteristics which tend to affect economic well-being.

First, family structure. While Black households overall had 59% of the median income of white households in 2021, married-couple Black households had almost 77% of the median income of white married-couple households.

Looked at another way, white households headed by a single female had just 62% of the median income of Black married-couple households. The figure was 41% for Black single-female headed homes.

At the lower end of the income range, family structure mattered still more. Among Black married-couple households with kids, the poverty rate in 2021 was 7.4%. Among white single-mother households with young children it was more than 32%.

In short, single parenthood remains a far more powerful predictor of economic hardship than race.

Changes in family status may have had some role to play in the narrowing of the overall racial income gap. The census data shows that the percentage of Black Minnesota adults who are married rose from just over 32% in 2016 to almost 35% in 2021 (the rate barely budged among white Minnesotans, from 53.5% to 53.6%). Meanwhile, the portion of all Black households headed by a single mom fell from nearly 20% to 15% (again, change was minimal among white Minnesotans).

Employment is another obvious factor affecting incomes. And here too, much of the news is encouraging. Compared with the overall 59% ratio of Black household income to white household income, the gaps among full-time year-round workers are smaller. Fully employed Black males in Minnesota earned 68% of their white counterparts' earnings in 2021, while Black female full-timers earned 74% as much as their white counterparts. Again, the gaps remain regrettable, but full-time work is an equalizing force.

And Black employment is on the rise in Minnesota. According to the ACS data, the percentage of Black adults in the workforce (employed or seeking a job) rose to 70.5% in 2021, up from just under 68% in 2016. The percentage currently employed rose to 63%, up from 61%.

Among white Minnesotans, both the percentage of adults in the workforce and the percentage currently employed declined between 2016 and 2021.

Forgive the blizzard of numbers. But these are noteworthy numbers, reflecting social trends that, were they to continue, might make a real difference in Minnesota's troubling gaps.

As for the cause of the trends, wiser analysts than I will have to pinpoint them. Some of it could be as simple (and as complicated) as demographics, the age structure of populations.

Minnesota's white and Black populations are both getting older, but the white population's median age in 2021 was 42, the Black population's 29. To oversimplify, it means that a critical mass of white Minnesotans are moving toward and into retirement, while a critical mass of Black Minnesotans are moving toward and through middle age, the years of settling down in one's career and one's life, and of peak earnings.

Combine those demographic shifts with a famously tight labor market, and one can imagine new opportunities opening up and inspiring new choices and directions.

Whatever all the causes and complications may be, it turns out something modestly favorable has been happening quietly in these often loud and dispiriting times of ours. It's worth knowing and worth thinking about.