Next Social Contract

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include jobs, income inequality, housing, the unbanked, retirement security, personal finance, and economic mobility. Stay tuned for next week, which will likely be dominated by the release of the President's FY 2013 budget proposal on Monday, which tends to send Washington, DC into a budget-centric tizzy.

Entrepreneurs, businesses, NGOs, and governments exalt mobile technology as a game-changing tool to fight global poverty. But what if our eagerness to connect the world is inadvertently exacerbating the global economic divide?

Editor’s Note: Contributors to this post will be part of a panel on the topic taking place on Thursday, February 9th in Washington, D.C. Sign up for the event here. This post is part of the Global Innovation Showcase created by the New America Foundation and the Global Public Square.

Update (2/9): Check out our data page for more information about the event and data points on economic mobility, inequality, and poverty.

This Friday, the Asset Building Program is hosting an event to discuss the concept of economic mobility and to more thoroughly investigate how economic mobility is defined and the true extent of the problem. Scott Winship, a Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, will identify some of the key challenges of defining economic mobility, which stem from a lack of an agreed upon definition of mobility, highly complex data or a lack of data altogether, and political agendas that are not conducive to productive conversations about mobility. Heather McGhee, Director of Demos' Washington office, and Shawn Fremstad, attorney and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research will provide comments on Winship's ideas and outline appropriate policy responses.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include CFED's release of its Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, financial education, jobs, asset limits, lower-income consumers, the mortgage mess, and rhetoric about poverty, inequality, and mobility.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut held a press conference today to discuss the important role that SNAP (Supplemental Nutritiona Assistance Program, or food stamps) plays in forming an economic safety net. Elise Gould from the Economic Policy Institute, Donna Cooper of the Center for American Progress, David Beckmann of Bread for the World, and Tara Marks of Just Harvest contributed their expertise on the economic, political, and social dimensions of SNAP.

Conditional clauses are very important. Mitt Romney's statement yesterday that he's "not worried about the very poor" is based on the supposition that "there's a safety net there," an "ample" safety net at that. This is similar to my saying that I'm not worried about whether my husband will starve to death when I leave town because he knows how to order a pizza.

CFED released their 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard today and held a webinar to introduce new data on asset poverty, financial security, and sound policy approaches. This is the 10-year anniversary of the Scorecard, which grades all 50 states and the District of Columbia in five key areas: Financial Assets & Income, Businesses & Jobs, Housing & Homeownership, Health Care and Education.

Engagement with elected leaders by their constituents is a powerful accountability mechanism, and elections are a decisive expression of that function. In a year where poverty and inequality are at historic levels and the prospects for low-income families to improve their circumstances increasingly uncertain, how will these conditions influence both the rhetoric and policy proposals of those seeking elected office and the choices of voters?

Our asset building friends at CFED are hosting a webinar tomorrow at noon Eastern Time to release a major report, the Assets & Opportunity Scorecard. This key document presents national and state level data about families' asset levels and financial stability. Registration is available here.