The Mortgage Interest Deduction and the White-Black Wealth Gap, 1984-2021

A white plastic model house with a gray roof and red shingles on a pile of U.S. dollar bills.

How has the home mortgage interest deduction affected White-Black wealth gaps over the past several decades? This project will answer this question by using the NBERs TAXSIM program, which calculates federal and state income tax liabilities from typical survey data, to generate novel estimates of the wealth savings that households in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics have received from the mortgage interest deduction from 1984-2021.