Equity – the controversial early frontrunner for “Word of the Year” – is about to play a starring role in a conference aimed at leveling the economic playing field in Orange County, an event titled “The Path Ahead: OC’s Roadmap to Equity.”

And while equity has become a trigger word for people of all political stripes – for some, “equity” can stand for “anti-White racism,” for others it means “hope for a just society” – the word has a third meaning that’s less rarely tossed around.

Ownership.

And that version of equity, the one about creating equal opportunities to earn and keep long-term wealth, could translate into huge gains for Orange County’s economy, according to people at the center of the Thursday, Feb. 6 conference at UC Irvine.

“When people hear ‘equity’ they think of fairness. And that’s certainly part of the definition. But part of having an equity perspective, economically speaking, is about whether everybody has an equal opportunity to thrive,” said Manuel Pastor, an economist who heads USC’s Equity Research Institute and who oversaw a report, “The Economic Benefits of Equity,” that will be made public at the conference.

“There’s significant research that suggests economies that are more unequal have more problems over time, that they can’t sustain growth,” Pastor added. “That perspective has become more common in the past 20 years or so, with research from a lot of people (such as the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Board) showing inequality is costly for any economy.”

How costly? The USC report, which tracks local economic and demographic shifts from the 1970s through 2022, offers specifics.

“Orange County’s economy could have been $97.4 billion stronger in 2022 if racial income gaps had been closed,” the authors wrote.

The USC report tracked local population shifts and economic history.

Broadly speaking, at the end of the 1970s, Orange County’s economy was slightly better than the nation in terms of income and home ownership. And, at that time, the county also looked a lot like the rest of the nation, with a population that was 78% non-Hispanic White.

Today, the county’s economy is usually ranked among the most robust in the country, with higher-than-average levels of both income and education. From 1979 through 2022, real gross domestic product in Orange County grew 238%, compared with 148% for the nation as a whole.

That county’s population also has shifted, becoming one of the nation’s most racially and ethnically diverse metro areas in the country. By 2022, White people accounted for 38.5% of the county’s overall population and Latino and Asian people combined to account for a 55.7% plurality. What’s more, about 1 in 3 Orange County residents was born outside the country, and roughly 1 in 7 are either undocumented themselves or live in families with at least one undocumented person, according to the report.

But if diversity and prosperity have grown in tandem, the report’s findings suggest that benefits haven’t been as equally felt.

For example, in 2022 the median household income in Orange County for a White family with a child 5 or younger was $150,000, far more than the median income for Black ($99,500) and Latino ($76,800) families with similarly aged children, according to the report.

“If the county achieved racial equity in incomes, people of color would see their average annual incomes increase by over $32,000 – a 67 percent gain,” the report found.

Pastor acknowledged that, as goals go, creating a race-blind economy is more idealistic than realistic. Everything from outlawed red-lining laws that once prevented Black and Jewish people from buying homes in many neighborhoods to current (and not racially controversial) tax rules about mortgage interest contribute to today’s wealth gaps. And issues that contribute to income inequality – racial bias, educational barriers and even environmental factors – can’t easily be waved away.

But the potential gains of fixing those issues, Pastor noted, would be felt by the broad economy, not just the people who historically were discriminated against.

“The efficiencies that could come with economic equity would help everyone,” he said.

Showdown? No, but…

The meeting at UCI is sponsored by Orange County Grantmakers, a nonprofit that helps connect some of the wealthiest people in the county – roughly 50 individuals and families who give $100,000 or more a year to local charities – to nonprofits that use the money. So some well-heeled members, or representatives from their charitable operations, figure to attend the conference.

It’s unclear how the national mood about equity will play out at the conference.

What is known is that the meeting is coming at a moment when equity – at least when the word is applied to the broad push for equality known as diversity, equity and inclusion – is facing a political reckoning of sorts.

President Donald Trump won the 2024 election after campaigning against DEI, among other things, describing it as everything from an anchor on the U.S. economy to a vehicle for reverse racism. Since starting his second term as president, on Jan. 20, Trump has signed executive orders to banish DEI from all levels of the federal government and U.S. military. He’s also linked DEI to what he termed ineffective efforts to fight the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County and as a potential secondary cause of a recent mid-air collision involving a passenger jet and a military helicopter in Washington, D.C.

That anti-DEI push has broadened beyond the beltway. McDonald’s, Walmart and Target are among the many companies that recently have ended or rolled back internal programs aimed at boosting racial and gender equity. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google would end hiring targets aimed at diversifying its workforce.

None of that played a role in the decision to hold a conference with the word “Equity” in its title and with equity, writ-large, as the goal.

“The fact that the report is coming out right now, and that we’re having our event right now, is serendipitous,” said Taryn Palumbo, executive director of Orange County Grantmakers.

“But it is a reminder that we’re working on the right things,” she added, laughing.

Grantmakers works directly with philanthropists, not nonprofits, and the members’ politics aren’t uniformly liberal or conservative. But Palumbo said she hasn’t heard any pushback from members because of the word equity or about the goals of getting money to fix problems outlined in the report.

Instead, she said, her members have expressed interest in diving into data about economic sectors that might benefit from equity-oriented philanthropy.

Housing costs, for example, have been a hot-button issue in the county for decades, in terms of rent and in home ownership. And the report, commissioned by Grantmakers, offers data on what that looks like in real life.

Overall, the county ranks 17th out of 150 metro areas in terms of the high number of people who are “rent burdened,” meaning they pay more than 30% of their income for housing. The report notes that Latino renters (59%) and Black renters (58%) are most likely to fall into that trap.

Palumbo said numbers like that are critical to housing and other areas tracked in the report, such as food insecurity, education and exposure to pollution.

“Obviously, a lot of these data points are extremely aspirational. It’s like saying ‘Zero homelessness, and housing for all!’ But the numbers let us see the connection between home ownership and generational wealth and equity,” Palumbo said.

“It’s not our responsibility to get complete racial equity,” she added. “But it is important to direct efforts toward that goal. We’ll highlight the existing collaborations that move us in that direction, toward equity.”

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