Events

Upcoming Event: Economic Mobility: What’s the Problem and What to Do About It?

Friday, February 10, 2012 - 12:15pm - 1:30pm

Economic mobility and inequality are increasingly framing political debates. In a recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, President Obama described how the prospects of upward mobility for a child born into poverty have dimmed substantially, and he identified the path to inclusive prosperity as “the defining issue of our time.”

But has the climb up the economic ladder really become more arduous? Have more families in the middle class fallen downward? What can and should be done to increase economic security and create opportunities for upward mobility?

Scott Winship, fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and former research manager with the Economic Mobility Project, argues the answers to these questions are more complicated than they often appear. Winship suggests taking a closer look at data from a range of areas, such as employment, debt, and mobility, to tell a more realistic story of changing economic wellbeing, opportunity, and risk.

By focusing attention on how to define mobility, we will be better prepared to fill in our knowledge gaps and consider the policy choices that have the greatest potential to expand opportunities for those at the bottom and offer economic security for more families. Please join the New America Foundation’s Asset Building Program for a lively and timely conversation.

Participants

Featured Speaker
Scott Winship
Fellow in Economic Studies
The Brookings Institution

Discussants
Heather McGhee
Director of the Washington Office
Demos

Shawn Fremstad
Attorney and Senior Research Associate
Center for Economic Policy Research

Reid Cramer
Director, Asset Building Program
New America Foundation

Previous Event: Poverty, Inequality, Mobility, Oh My!

On November 22nd, the Asset Building Program hosted a panel of experts to discuss how Americans are faring in the years since the Great Recession according to different measures. Speakers from Wider Opportunities for Women, the Half in Ten Campaign, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Pew’s Economic Mobility Project joined moderator, Rachel Black, for a discussion of current data and indicators, who’s falling short according to these measures and by how much, and policy ideas for making progress.

Rachel Black noted in her introduction that, two years past the worst recession since the Great Depression, hardship is still pervasive. Income-based measures may not go far enough in capturing the multidimensional needs that contribute to a family’s wellbeing and present a limited tool for prescribing solutions. This event used multiple indicators to illustrate poverty, mobility, and economic security to better depict how families are really doing today.

Matt Unrath, Director of the National Family Economic Security Program at Wider Opportunities for Women, discussed WOW’s efforts to capture family wellbeing by creating Basic Economic Security Tables (BEST), which indexes family budget items and projects the necessary income that families would have to earn in order to cover those expenses. (http://www.wowonline.org/usbest/ ) Unrath highlighted a lack of affordable housing, accessible transportation options, and quality child care as major barriers to economic security for low-income parents, and particularly single parents.

Melissa Boteach, Manager of the Half in Ten Campaign, articulated the importance of defining an income threshold below which no family should fall, but also expanding the scope of families with access to critical supports necessary to avoid hardship. She highlighted findings of their new report, Restoring Shared Prosperity, http://halfinten.org/indicators which evaluates how families are faring at the national and state level according to a set of key indicators and three areas where policymakers should focus in order to improve those outcomes: creating good jobs, strengthening families, and promoting economic security.

Next, Indivar Dutta-Gupta from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities discussed the dynamics of inequality. Income inequality, he argues, damages our democracy by making our political process less representative of and less responsive to the needs of people on the low-end of the income spectrum. Additionally, rising income inequality has created a divergence in life expectancy for people at opposite ends of the income spectrum. Progressive taxation, support for worker benefits, and expanding health care access are among the strategies Dutta-Gupta looks to for improving inequality.

Erin Currier, from Pew’s Economic Mobility Project highlighted the importance of relative economic mobility as a key indicator. The data show that many Americans remain stuck in the income category they were born into, particularly at the high and low end of the income spectrum, a phenomenon known as “stickiness at the ends.” While Americans agree that government should support economic mobility, existing strategies target middle and higher income people primarily through the tax code. This leaves lower-income families unable to take advantage of these opportunities to move up the income ladder.

The concluding discussion expanded on the topics detailed in each presentation. The panelists talked more in depth about how income inequality and poverty hurt the United States’ economy and global competitiveness. They also addressed the importance of considering wealth inequality and how opportunities for asset building tend to be concentrated at the top of the income spectrum. Additionally, the panel fielded audience questions about the impact of rising health care costs and the value of using a material deprivation lens to analyze United States poverty.