A growing body of evidence shows that America’s racial geography shapes access to basic financial services (e.g. banking), highlighting a mechanism connecting segregation to economic vulnerability: spatially organized institutional marginalization.s While the practices and policies of “mainstream” commercial banks are central to this dynamic, the costs they impose on the communities they serve have been understudied. This study leverages survey data from a stratified random sample of 1344 banks across the United States to investigate variation in the costs and fees of entry-level checking accounts at commercial banks. Our evidence shows banks charge more to open and maintain checking accounts in neighborhoods and cities with larger Black and Latinx populations even after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as market competition. The higher costs of banking imposed on Black and Latinx communities are further compounded by parallel disparities in income. These findings reveal the unequal costs of banking in segregated America.

越来越多的证据表明，美国的种族地理影响着基础金融服务（例如银行业务）的获取，突显了一种将隔离与经济脆弱性联系起来的机制：空间组织的制度边缘化。s尽管“主流”商业银行的做法和政策对于在这种动态情况下，他们对所服务社区施加的成本已被低估。这项研究利用了来自美国1344家银行的分层随机样本中的调查数据，以调查商业银行入门级支票账户成本和费用的变化。我们的证据表明，即使在控制了人口和社会经济特征以及市场竞争之后，银行在黑人和拉丁裔人口较多的街区和城市开立和维护支票账户的费用也更高。黑人和拉丁裔社区承受的银行业成本较高，同时收入差距悬殊。这些发现揭示了隔离美国银行业的不平等成本。