May 13
"Middle Class Attainment in Young Adulthood: Higher Education and Racial Wealth Inequality" by Dr. Fenaba Addo
Tue, May 13, 2025
• 4:00pm
- 5:15pm (1h 15m) • Weitz 236
The Economics Department's
Race, Privilege and Inequality Visiting Speaker Series lecture, "Middle Class Attainment in Young Adulthood: Higher Education and Racial Wealth Inequality" by Dr. Fenaba Addo
Dr. Addo is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. She specializes in debt and racial wealth inequality.
Lecture Summary
For whom is higher education an engine of economic mobility? How should we value post-secondary education in a society with extreme wealth inequality and massive student loan debt? This study examines racial wealth inequality in young adulthood, its relationship with higher education, and what is means to be middle class. Also discussed, is how the racialization of student debt is intimately connected with the racial wealth gap and how policies, like debt cancellation, may disrupt the association between wealth and higher education going forward and provide an opportunity to address the damages this relationship has created.
from Economics Department