Asset Building Program: Latest Articles

Throughout our history, periods of unbounded market exuberance, like the one we recently experienced, have been followed by periods of far-reaching social and economic reform. The Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century gave way to the Populist and Progressive reforms of the early twentieth century, the Roaring Twenties to the New Deal, and the Eisenhower-Kennedy Nifty-Fifty bull market to the Great Society and the War on Poverty. From this cycle of great wealth creation (and abuse) followed by great… more

A novel solution to yawning inequality in America is on the horizon: widespread wealth creation. Usually, alarms of gaping inequality are met with calls for boosting the minimum wage, the earned-income tax credit, and unions (all good ideas), or redistributing wealth through higher taxes. But wealth creation has been a great idea for the U.S. historically, and now we just need to do it for the majority of Americans that have little or no wealth.

And it is a… more

The Ideas Industry

Interested in earning 200 percent on the dollar? It's a real offer being made to the poorest Americans in selected cities. The goal: encouraging low-income earners to save money by providing them with matching funds.

And perhaps the oddest thing about the ongoing policy experiment with so-called "individual development accounts" -- IDAs -- is that initially, it can be hard to find takers.

"There are real issues of trust," said Michelle Miller-Adams, whose book "Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the… more

Last week, in an annual autumn ritual, the Census Bureau released its latest statistics on poverty and income. After falling for four consecutive years, the poverty rate rose to 11.7 percent in 2001. But this figure, whether rising or declining, tells only part of the story about poverty in America: It measures only income. For a more complete picture -- and a more disheartening one -- it is necessary to measure the assets of the poor as well.

Between 1983… more