Savings

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.

Last week, NPR treated listeners to an interesting broadcast that touted preschool as potentially the best job-training program. This isn't really news to our friends in the Early Educational Initiative, who have been advocates for early childhood education for some time.

LOS ANGELES - The Select Committee on Financial Empowerment convened yesterday in Bell Gardens to discuss strategies to help working families thrive during tough economic times. This is the first time at the state level, that a legislative committee has focused on exploring the broad public policy and legislative opportunities to expand savings, and asset ownership in California.

Former IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg and Peter Tufano, formerly of Harvard Business School but now Dean of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, have a terrific op-ed at the New York Times today on the issues around the purchase of paper savings bonds.

If you're like most Americans, the America you want is cold weather, blond singing icons, and a robust welfare state. No, wait, scratch that. While there may be varying degrees to which any of that is true, there is more uniformity in the desire to have the Swedish distribution of wealth.