While race- and ethnicity-based economic inequality long predates the pandemic, disparities have widened over the past year, economist Jeff Fuhrer told a Mainebiz virtual forum on Thursday.
Fuhrer, a former top official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, is now executive vice president and chief strategy officer at MassDevelopment, that state's finance and development agency.
In his opening keynote of the "Five on the Future" discussion, Fuhrer questioned whether the United States is the land of opportunity it purports to be, saying, "I'd like to believe that's true, but we're pretty far from that."
Backing up that point, he cited 2018 data showing discrepancies in income distribution for Black and Latino families versus white families.