Addressing financial disparities in the Latino community

Cristóbal Rodríguez, associate dean of Equity, Inclusion and Community Engagement and associate professor, offered insight to moneygeek.com on the financial constraints many Latino communities experience. “My observations about financial disparities that Latino communities face are largely based around educational attainment levels related to economic opportunities, as well as access to wealth development opportunities,” Rodriguez says.

Instead of blaming these communities for their lack of advancement, he says, we should transform the narrative into non-deficit thinking approaches to explain how the lack of educational and economic opportunities and resources directly shape the disparities. 

“We know from research that the community that advances the most both economically and educationally—when considering the level of a group's economic and education starting point— are Latino immigrant communities. Unfortunately, we are still one of the most advanced nations with the greatest inequality largely due to the lack of educational and economic opportunity,” Rodriguez says. 

Read the entire article.