Research

By Jaya Burathoki, Save the Children

Originally posted on www.youthsave.org

If you live or work in the Washington, D.C. / Virginia / Maryland area and are interested in asset-building, you are in for a treat. During January 11-15, 2012, approximately 20 individual research papers and posters focusing on asset-building research will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). This research is the latest and greatest from some of the leading researchers in the asset-building field, including Gina Chowa, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Vernon Loke, Jin Huang, and Youngmi Kim. Topics include savings at tax time, financial capability of youth in international settings, home ownership and housing stability, and debt and asset accumulation. The conference will be held at the Grand Hyatt Washington. Presentations that are "don't miss" are listed below. Click on the number at the end of the titled presentation for a direct link to the complete abstract.

During one of our recent events, Sheldon Garon of Princeton University and Ray Boshara of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis referred to the weak household balance sheet as one of the core economic challenges of our time, suggesting that households must focus on asset-building rather than rely on credit and debt.

In recent years, researchers and policymakers have offered up young people’s savings policies (e.g., Child Development Accounts [CDAs], the ASPIRE Act) as potential solutions for mitigating the effects of parents’ and households’ financial resources on young people's educational and financial outcomes. One question of interest is whether young people’s financial outcomes can be improved by extending access to basic financial services early in life. In other words, if you give someone a savings account in adolescence, do they maintain that account into young adulthood and beyond?

Today, YouthSave’s core Research Advisory Council (RAC) member, Carolina Trivelli was appointed as Peru’s Minister of Social Inclusion. The newly formed Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion is charged with planning and implementing the country’s pro-poor programs for marginalized communities who have not benefited from Peru's increasing economic growth.

The fastest a person has ever traveled is just 24,791 miles per hour. The three men of Apollo 10 went that fast on their way back from the moon in 1969.

The fastest a manmade object has ever traveled is 39,000 miles per hour—the speed with which Voyager 1, a space probe launched in 1977, is leaving the solar system.

Mark your calendars! Suffolk University’s Law School and the National Consumer Law Center are convening a Research Symposium on Credit Scoring and Credit Reporting in Boston, MA on June 6-7, 2012. The symposium will be invite-only and authors are invited to submit papers for consideration until November 15, 2011. See the attached pdf on the right under "Related Files" for more details about the submission process, possible topics, and formatting.

Fred Ssewamala, Associate Professor at Columbia University, YouthSave member, and Global Assets Project Senior Fellow, has received a $3.34M grant for a family-based economic empowerment program for AIDS-orphaned and vulnerable youth (11-14) called, Bridges to the Future.

By Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis

Originally posted on www.youthsave.org

The economic environment in America today is more dire than most of us have ever known. We are in the midst of an unemployment emergency, in essence a jobless recovery: notwithstanding recent marginal upticks in official U.S. jobs numbers, there will be no fundamental improvement in the unemployment picture unless major new national economic strategy initiatives are taken. Who will step up to drive them forward?