Health311Search all NYC.gov websites
Print icon Print

First-of-its-kind NYC Health Department Study Highlights Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Wealth and Health Among New Yorkers

Wealthier New Yorkers More Likely to Report Better Health and Less Psychological Distress, While Black and Latino Respondents, Even in Higher Wealth Groups, Often Reported Worse Health Outcomes

Report Points to the Impact Targeted Policies Addressing Wealth Inequity and Racial Inequity Could Have on Improving New Yorkers’ Health

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.

The report’s findings could inform policies that target wealth inequity not just as a means of improving people’s wealth but could also unlock barriers to improve health outcomes and life expectancy for Black and Latino New Yorkers in particular, and for the city as a whole. Since the study was conducted, the city has already put policies into place directly and indirectly addressing these inequities, including but not limited to: paying for medical debt relief; the launch of free childcare for two-year olds in New York City; opening two new clinics that provide comprehensive healthcare to young people ages 16 to 25 years old; securing a $5 million settlement in worker restitution, civil penalties, and damages for more than 49,000 food delivery workers. Furthermore, the study identifies bold public policy interventions such as reparation programs to address historical injustices, progressive tax reforms to reduce the racial wealth gap, and using wealth as a standard measure in public health data to better understand and address these issues.

“New York City is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, yet to this day, it has deep economic and racial inequities. As our new study shows, wealth and health are deeply linked — wealth shapes health,” said NYC Health Department Acting Commissioner and Chief Medical Officer and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School Dr. Michelle Morse. “Our research provides actionable data to guide policies that address the root causes of wealth inequities and promote health for all New Yorkers.”

“Economic factors and racial/ethnic affiliation have both been clearly associated with disparate access to health care, disease outcomes, and ultimately disparities in life expectancy,” said Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. “This study goes even further in examining differences within the broader racial and ethnic classifications amongst the New York City population. The complexity of the problem at hand requires greater discernment in identifying the groups with highest vulnerabilities. The results of this study help in identifying such groups, towards targeting interventions that could best address their needs.”

“Conventionally research on the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes has focused on income primarily determined by earnings, education, or occupational status as indicators of socioeconomic status. 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,” said William A. Darity Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. “The current study demonstrates the force of the connection between wealth and health outcomes, with strong implications for racial and ethnic disparities in New York City. Health gaps cannot be closed without closing wealth gaps.”

Methodology

The researchers selected 11 mutually exclusive racial and ethnic groups to survey: Puerto Rican, Dominican, or other Latino ancestry; African American, Caribbean or West Indian, or other Black ancestry; Chinese or other Asian or Pacific Islander (API) ancestry; Indigenous ancestry, including American Indian, Native, First Nations, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, or Alaska Native ancestries; white; and multiracial or some other race, including Middle Eastern or North African. Many of these groups represent the most prevalent racial and ethnic groups in New York City’s adult population, while others have a smaller, but notable presence in the population. Researchers surveyed 2,866 adults as part of the study, using random sampling from two pre-existing databases. For the survey’s design and questions, researchers built upon the approach used in the Color of Wealth surveys across several major U.S. cities, measuring financial information such as assets, debts, personal savings, and investment activity, and supplementing with questions about physical and mental health status, and healthcare access and utilization, in addition to collecting demographic data such as race, ethnicity, ancestry, age, sex, educational attainment, household composition, nativity, income, and family background.

Key Findings in Wealth

The study identified wide racial and ethnic inequities in wealth. Chinese respondents had the highest median net worth at $320,000, followed by white respondents at $142,000. Puerto Rican respondents reported a median net worth of $160, while respondents with Black ancestry (excluding African American, Caribbean or West Indian) reported $25. For most Black and Latino groups, the bottom quartile of net worth was zero or negative, meaning at least 25 percent of respondents had no wealth or their debts equaled or exceeded their assets.

White and Chinese respondents were also more likely to own valuable assets like homes, retirement accounts, and stocks. For example, 49.6 percent of Chinese respondents owned homes compared to just 22.1 percent of African American respondents, 12.5 percent of Dominicans, and 8.7 percent of Native American groups. Liquid assets, including savings accounts, were also much higher for white and Chinese groups, with median values of $125,000 and $90,100, respectively, compared to $6,000, $4,000, and $2,300 for Dominican, Black, Puerto Rican groups. white and Chinese respondents had higher levels of secured debt, such as a mortgage, which is often tied to wealth-building assets like homes. Black and Latino groups, on the other hand, had higher levels of unsecured debt, such as credit card or medical debt, which can be financially burdensome without contributing to wealth accumulation.

Key Findings in Health

Wealth plays a critical role in health, acting as a buoy during emergencies and enabling access to better living conditions and healthcare. Higher wealth also allows people to avoid financial stress and debt during emergencies and invest in health-promoting behaviors such as eating nutritious food, and regular exercise.

People with the most wealth were more likely to report excellent or very good health, 59 percent, compared to those in the lowest quartile, 36 percent. Similarly, psychological distress decreased as wealth increased, with 86 percent of the wealthiest respondents reporting low or no distress compared to 70 percent in the lowest quartile.

However, increased wealth does not solve racial health inequities. Even within the same wealth quartiles, Black and Latino respondents reported worse health outcomes than white respondents. For example, 59 percent of white respondents reported excellent or very good health, compared to only 40 percent of African Americans. African Americans also had the highest prevalence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, at 60 percent, compared to 34 percent among Multiracial respondents.

This also shows how the relationship between wealth and health is stronger for some groups than others. For instance, Chinese respondents showed a dramatic improvement in health as wealth increased, with excellent or very good health rising from 13 percent in the lowest quartile to 52 percent in the highest. Black respondents, however, showed little improvement in health beyond the lowest wealth quartile, suggesting systemic barriers that limit the health benefits of wealth for this group.

Despite having similar wealth levels, racialized groups, particularly Black and Latino respondents, often experience fewer health benefits from increased wealth when compared to white respondents. Factors like residential segregation, discrimination in health care, and devaluation of assets in communities of color reduce the positive impacts on health that are generally associated with increased wealth for other groups. The report highlights how historical policies such as redlining, discriminatory housing practices, and unequal access to education have contributed to the racial wealth gap. These systemic inequities have compounded over generations, leaving Black and Latino communities with fewer resources to build wealth and protect their health. As such, the authors of the report aim to shape local public policy to address the legacy of racism, reduce racial health inequities, and reduce wealth inequality in New York City.

Next Steps

New York City is one of the wealthiest cities in the U.S., but it also has deep economic inequality and racial segregation. The city’s diverse population and unique healthcare system make it a critical location for studying — and implementing public policy to change— how wealth and health intersect.

The study suggests that addressing wealth inequality could help reduce health inequities and identifies bold public policy interventions to do so, including: reparations programs to address historical injustices; progressive tax reforms to reduce the racial wealth gap; and using wealth as a standard measure in public health data collection to better understand and address these issues.

Fortunately, New York City has already started on this work. In 2021, the New York City Board of Health declared racism is a public health crisis, which required the NYC Health Department to expand its work to develop priorities and next steps for a racially just recovery from COVID-19 and other actions to address this public health crisis.

Since the start of his administration, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has focused on affordability issues facing all New Yorkers. Since January 1, Mayor Mamdani has:

In the last five years, the NYC Health Department has expanded policies and programs to help narrow health and wealth inequities in New York City. Some of those include:

  • Announcing a medical debt relief program to erase more than $2 billion in medical debt for up to 500,000 working-class New Yorkers, making it the largest municipal initiative of its kind in the country.
  • Recording a 28 percent decrease in overdose deaths in 2024, the most substantial decline in nearly a decade, following significant multi-year city, state, and federal investments in overdose prevention and recovery services.
  • Releasing a comprehensive plan to equitably tackle the root causes of chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and screenable cancers, with an explicit focus on meeting New Yorkers material needs.
  • Joining with northeastern states and cities, including the New York State Announcing the city’s first-ever Neighborhood Stress-Free Zone pilot in Brownsville, Brooklyn, providing stigma-free access to maternal health education, mental health services, and social support, and social support for pregnant and postpartum New Yorkers.
  • Releasing a blueprint to expand our community health workers to 10,000 workers by 2030 to further advance healthy equity across the city. This expansion will serve 1.5 million New Yorkers and save nearly $2 billion in annual health care costs.
  • Launching New York City’s Health Care Price Comparison tool, equipping New Yorkers to make informed health care decisions while holding providers and insurance companies accountable.

The NYC Health Department and the Mamdani administration are committed to continuing to build on this work, to create a city that is more affordable, more equitable, and healthier for all New Yorkers.

###

012-26

MEDIA CONTACT: PressOffice@health.nyc.gov