Eleven years ago, one number shocked Boston: $8.
That was the estimated median wealth of U.S.-born Black households in metropolitan Boston in the 2015 Color of Wealth in Boston study. The figure became shorthand for a vast wealth divide in one of the wealthiest regions in America. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, The Color of Wealth in Boston.
In August, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released a far larger statewide report. Based on the 2025 Massachusetts Economic Conditions and Household Opportunity Survey, or Mass ECHOS, it includes 5,018 responses from across the Commonwealth.
Its reported estimates are stark: median family net wealth was $549,200 for white families and $7,800 for Black families. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Family Wealth in Massachusetts Putting $8 in 2015 beside $7,800 in 2025 raises an obvious question: did the economic condition of the population identified in the earlier study improve dramatically?
The two studies cannot answer that question.
They are not longitudinal measures of the same population. The earlier study concerned the Boston metropolitan area and included roughly 400 households overall, including about 70 U.S.-born Black respondents. Mass ECHOS is a statewide survey of more than 5,000 respondents, constructed differently and intended to provide a descriptive snapshot of family wealth in Massachusetts. Boston Globe, Aug. 17, 2026 There is another distinction that warrants attention. The Mass ECHOS appendix includes estimates within Massachusetts’ Black population. Among its smaller-population categories is a group labeled “US Black,” with an estimated median net wealth of $8,000. That estimate has a wide 95 percent confidence interval, from negative $9,300 to $25,300.
What does “US Black” mean? In email correspondence with Nyhiem Way, president of United Sons & Daughters of Freedmen, Boston Fed researchers explained that “US Black” is a family-level coding category. It includes a single-adult family, or a couple in which a respondent or spouse was U.S.-born and a respondent or spouse reported Black, alone or in combination with another racial category. The explanation did not establish that both characteristics had to belong to the same person in a couple. Boston Fed correspondence on file with the author.
That clarification matters. “US Black” is not a measure of American Freedmen families— families descended from persons emancipated from slavery in the United States.
A U.S.-born descendant of an immigrant family can satisfy a race-and-birthplace classification. So can a qualifying person in a household with a spouse of another background. Those classifications do not establish whether a family descends from people emancipated in the United States.
This is not a criticism of the Boston Fed for failing to make its survey answer a question beyond the published classification. Mass ECHOS represents an important investment in understanding household wealth, and the Boston Fed states that its goals include exploring wealth gaps “between and within” demographic groups. Boston Fed, Mass ECHOS research goals
The distinction bears on how the figures are interpreted afterward.
Massachusetts has not spent the past 11 years standing still. The response to the 2015 findings helped spur civic and institutional activity, including the creation of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, Eastern Bank’s business equity fund, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Pacesetters program, and equity work at Boston City Hall. Boston Globe, Aug. 17, 2026
The published Mass ECHOS classifications cannot determine whether those efforts reached American Freedmen families, how much capital reached them, whether their homeownership or liquid wealth changed, or which interventions produced results for that historically defined population.
That does not establish that the programs failed American Freedmen. It means their outcomes cannot be attributed to that population from the published data.
Race tells us one thing. Birthplace tells us another. Historical descent tells us something different.
Massachusetts has data that measure the first two. The published Mass ECHOS results do not measure the third.
H.4351, now before the Massachusetts House Committee on Ways and Means, concerns institutional capacity to study and address the condition of American Freedmen as a historically defined population. Massachusetts Legislature, H.4351
The question is not whether Mass ECHOS documents racial wealth inequality. It does. The question is whether Massachusetts can identify the historically defined population at issue, establish a baseline, measure whether interventions reach it, and evaluate outcomes over time.
The new Boston Fed report is consequential for what it tells us and for the question its published classifications do not answer.
Eleven years after Boston learned about the $8 figure, neither the current $7,800 estimate for Black families nor the $8,000 “US Black” estimate establishes what happened to the descendants of American emancipation.
That remains an unanswered question.
Antonia Edwards is co-founder of SoliDarity Community Engagement Group and a board member of United Sons & Daughters of Freedmen.”
