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Philanthropy & Funding
Translating Research into Action
There is no doubt that social change efforts are accelerated by data, but investing in high-quality, cutting-edge research alone isn’t enough to produce solutions. Funders and researchers have to invest more in translating research into action.
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Economic Development
Closing the Wealth Gap for Families of Color
We must align programs and policies to better support the financial strength and security of families of color today, while keeping sight of the long-term benefits for all of creating a truly inclusive economy.
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Global Issues
Sharing Solutions to Poverty
Efforts to battle poverty in the United States can learn a lot from the developing world, and vice versa. Thankfully some of the barriers between these traditionally isolated domains are falling.
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Economic Development
Responsible Lending when Traditional Underwriting Doesn’t Work
For households facing financial volatility, the wrong kind of credit can drag them under. But it can also be a tool for building stability. How can we make loans for big-ticket items like vehicles both good for people and good for business?
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Economic Development
Start-ups Bring New Solutions to Cash-Flow Challenges
The financial services industry is at the beginning of a wave of innovation that has the potential to improve consumer financial health.
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Economic Development
Financial Security in an Age of Short-Term Volatility
Policies aimed at generating long-term financial security have become irrelevant to many American households. We need new policies to shore up households in the short term.
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Economic Development
Solving for Shelter: Matching Income Volatility with Housing Stability
Housing programs and policies implicitly assume households have stable incomes. Here’s some ways to change them.
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Economic Development
Precarious Work and the Employment-based Safety Net
Welfare reform to encourage work doesn’t take into account how unstable jobs have become, especially for the poorest.
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Economic Development
Mismatch: How Income and Expense Volatility Are Undermining Households
Even when households are saving a lot, growing income and expense volatility mean building assets is harder than ever.
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Economic Development
The Hidden Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class
The financial lives of Americans have dramatically changed. The programs, policies, and products designed to help them need to change too.
Economic Development
The Hidden Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class
There’s no question that the American economy has undergone dramatic change over the last 30 years—stagnant wages, decline of organized labor, rising inequality, automation, freelancing, globalization, and of course the Great Recession—but how these changes have affected the daily financial lives of ordinary Americans has been harder to see. The US Financial Diaries research project brings the impact of these changes to light, and offers an unprecedented look at how low- and moderate-income American families live their financial lives today.
The findings of the research illustrate how current programs and policies for helping families build stability and invest in the future are based on an outdated understanding of what a financial life looks like—one that no longer reflects reality. The goal of this series is to help social innovators and funders get a clearer view of the “way we live now” and the implications for how products, programs, and policies have to change as a result.
The Portfolios of the Poor research—which followed families living on under $2/day in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa—has had a major impact in changing the mental models we have of poverty in the developing world. The US Financial Diaries, which take a similar approach, and other research that reveals the hidden financial lives of America’s poor and middle class, have the potential to spur a much-needed round of innovation in approaches that address the needs of a changing America.
