February 20, 2026 — A new first-of-its-kind study of nearly 3,000 adults in New York City finds significant inequities in wealth and health outcomes across the 11 most common racial and ethnic groups, showing that Black and Latino New Yorkers have less wealth and unfairly worse health outcomes compared to others.
Conducted in June 2024 by the NYC Health Department in collaboration with the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, and the Duke University Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, “Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Wealth and Health: Evidence from a Multiethnic Survey in NYC” underscores the strong link between wealth and health, highlighting persistent racial and ethnic inequities in both areas. Measuring wealth — calculated as assets minus debt — is an emerging public health approach to understanding economic inequity that goes beyond measuring income.
We now are increasingly aware that the most powerful measure of socioeconomic status is wealth, or the net value of property owned by an individual or household.” — William A. Darity Jr.
Learn more here: First-of-its-kind NYC Health Department Study Highlights Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Wealth and Health Among New Yorkers