Savings

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to discuss the recent poverty and income numbers from Census on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show.

Over the past few years, Reid Cramer and Jeffrey Lubell, the Executive Director for the Center on Housing Policy, have worked on identifying ways to improve asset building opportunities among people receiving federal housing assistance. Their paper, “Taking Asset Building and Earning Incentives to Scale in HUD-Assisted Rental Housing,” details possible models that could improve the existing housing subsidy program.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas dedicated an issue of its series “Banking and Community Perspectives” earlier this year to the issue of asset building in a rural context. “Asset Building Taking Root in Rural Communities” provides a thorough overview of the unique challenges of building wealth and economic security in rural areas and features promising regional initiatives that seek to do just that. To date, policymakers, non-profits, and the private sector have collaborated on diverse approaches to asset building in the area from IDAs in New Mexico and Louisiana to community tax centers and financial literacy efforts in Texas.

Originally posted on Microlinks

Yesterday, Pew’s Economic Mobility Project released a new report that focused on various contributors to uneven downward economic mobility. As I mentioned in a post last week about another Pew report, economic mobility refers to movement up or down the income ladder over time or across generations. The title of this report “Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream” reminds us what is at stake.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its annual report about food security in the U.S. this morning. Food security is defined as the ability to access enough food at all times for an active, healthy life. In 2010, 17.2 million U.S. households were designated food insecure, meaning that last year they had difficulty providing enough food for all family members due to constrained resources.

Economic mobility in early twenty first century America is at the core of our work. It has also become a hot topic among bloggers, people in the policy and advocacy worlds, government officials, and the media. How are we faring compared with past generations and what can we expect for future generations? As this short and accessible video from Pew’s Economic Mobility Project demonstrates, one key issue hampering this discussion is the difficulty of adequately defining economic mobility itself.

“In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.

Financial capability is a term increasingly used by many development practitioners, policy makers, and researchers concerned with youth development and their future financial wellbeing. However, there are varying perspectives on how to define, design, and deliver effective financial capability interventions across the youth-inclusive financial services field.

The country is facing a serious debt crisis that threatens to undermine our economic recovery. No, not that one. American households are carrying around $11.4 trillion of debt.