Children, Race/Ethnicity, and Marital Wealth Accumulation in Black and Hispanic Households1

As wealth inequality in the United States continues to grow, family characteristics have become increasingly important to researchers’ understanding of changes in wealth inequality over time. One aspect of adulthood is having children and transitioning to parenthood, which can affect numerous outcomes, including wealth trajectories. Due to widely-recognized structural constraints, black and Hispanic households generally have fewer financial resources to draw upon when they begin to have children. Therefore, existing racial/ethnic wealth inequality may increase when minority families have children. W e use growth curve modeling techniques to analyze a sample of continuously married couples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort. Results suggest that children affect family financial resources in different ways and that this effect varies by race and ethnicity. These findings improve our understanding of how a similar family event-having children-within families contributes to divergent financial outcomes between families.