Bursting Whose Bubble?: The Racial Tax Consequences of Evaporated Home Value.

Does racial bias exist in the distribution of homeownership tax benefits? Some argue yes, but few have empirically answered the question. Even fewer have considered how the 2006 housing collapse may have altered these distributions. Utilizing national-level data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I measure the housing crash's before-and-after impact on home equity values by completing a series of ordinary least squares regression models. My aim is to discern not only if the potential eligibility of homeownership tax benefits is distributed along racial lines, but how this distribution changed between 2001 and 2010. The evidence I offer confirms that race is an organizing principle for who can claim homeownership tax benefits and how much. Having implications for 'the sedimentation of racial inequality,' my findings show how structural constraints of taxation, housing wealth, and disaster build upon one another in overlapping and interacting ways to reproduce racial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]