U.S. policies - not individual choices - have driven a Latino wealth gap, report says
A new report shows that for every $1 in wealth held by white households, Latino households hold just 22 cents, but the reason for the wealth gap is not due to a lack of individual choices, but decades of policy decisions that have locked out Latinos from generational wealth, according to the report.
The report, “Sueño Incompleto: A History of the Latino Wealth Gap in the U.S.” is a collaboration between the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute and UnidosUS. It traces how policy decisions related to immigration, housing, labor, public benefits, and education have shaped wealth inequality for Latino households since 1848.
Gabriella Carmona, lead author of the report and a senior research analyst at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, says households across the country are struggling and feel they haven’t seen the benefit of hard work they’ve put in for generations. She asks: How can the country maintain a certain level of promise and commitment to all Americans as wealth disparity widens?
“At what cost, if you’ve never been shown that the system can do right by you, are you to ever expect that participating in it would ever be beneficial for you,” Carmona told the Star-Telegram.
Latinos make up 31% of Tarrant County, 35% of Fort Worth, and 20% of the United States, according to the Census. The median household income in Fort Worth is $82,503, with white residents earning a median of $103,264 and Latino residents earning a median of $76,953, according to data from the 2024 American Community Survey. Latino people contributed over $4.1 trillion to the U.S. GDP and $739 billion in Texas in 2023, according to a 2025 U.S. Latino GDP Report by the Latino Donor Collaborative.
The Latino wealth gap refers to an enduring disparity between Latino households and their white peers. The report takes into account the diversity of Latino people in terms of race, nationality, immigration status, and complex histories shaped by colonization.
In the study, five institutions – immigration, housing, labor, public benefits, and education – are broken down into present-day disparities, the policies that produced them. The study concludes with evidence-based policy recommendations.
For immigration, the report identifies three key policy measures that contribute to the Latino wealth gap: foreign policy and immigration law that create a hierarchy of access; labor recruitment and regulation for economic control; and the use of deportation during economic downturns.
According to Texas Business Outlook Surveys conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, immigration policy changes negatively affected the ability of 1 in 5 Texas businesses to hire and retain foreign-born workers last year. The U.S.-born workforce cannot make up for reduced immigration because of an aging population and low birth rates, the survey said. When “officials set immigration policy, they may also be setting the speed limit for the economy,” the survey concludes.
Juan Carlos Cerda, a Texas state director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a bipartisan coalition that advocates for immigration reform, says Americans are not replacing immigrants in industries such as construction, hospitality, agriculture or health care.
Cerda says this Latino wealth gap report is important because the immigration crackdown of undocumented Latino people leads to uncertainty about their futures, the inability to be promoted or to apply for other jobs because of their undocumented status, which ultimately harms Texas’ economy.
“You can’t just deport people without expecting it to harm the economy,” Cerda said.
The report also focuses on homeownership, which it says has been threatened for decades by federal land policies that determine who can own property, racialized appraisal systems that shape what property is deemed worthy of protection, and uneven access to credit for building wealth.
Latino people are disproportionately represented nationally in terms of homeownership at 51% vs 73% for white people. Only 28% of Latino households have retirement accounts compared to 62% of white households, according to the report.
The report gave three policy recommendations to expand pathways for Latino homeownership: expand access to affordable housing, expand access to credit and capital for first-time homebuyers, and safeguard Latino homeownership wealth.
Rebecca Flores Castro, a real estate agent in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, agrees with the recommendations but says there needs to be a focus on bilingual education to improve communication with native Spanish speakers about debt management and on better collaboration among professionals to provide resources to the community.
Castro works to help close the Latino wealth gap through homeownership, as she is the co-founder and chief operating officer of My Homeownership Academy, which provides education, resources, and support for first-time homebuyers. This includes information on building credit, loans and homeownership classes. She is also the producer of Home, Tu Casa: Faith, Finance & Homeownership Summit, a live video series that brings together faith-based leaders, industry professionals, and community organizations to learn about tools and build partnerships to take back to their communities.
But Castro says education is not enough. There needs to be follow-up and a pipeline of continuous improvement from policy reform to community help to close the wealth gap, which has barred Latino people from accessing and maintaining wealth.
“If you don’t know history, then it’s very, very easy to repeat it,” Castro said. “If we study the history of why it went wrong, then we have an opportunity to change it and change the trajectory of those numbers.”
