Family & Children

Editor's note: This entry was originally posted on Ed Money Watch a blog from the New America Foundation's Federal Education Budget Project.

When the federal government distributes education funding via formulas, it typically takes several things into account. Chief among the data typically used are state- and school district-level poverty rates as determined through the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates the Census Bureau conducts annually. These poverty rate estimates show the percentage of children age 5-17 living in families with total income below the poverty rate. Recently, the Census Bureau made those estimates available for 2010, providing a unique look into how poverty rates have shifted as a result of the economic recession. Those data are now available on the Federal Education Budget Project’s website (Ed Money Watch’s parent initiative). Users can compare poverty rates over time and view them in tandem with data on federal funding, student achievement, and other demographics.

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 alternatives to mainstream banking, EITC awareness, financial literacy, income and wealth inequality, homeownership, bankruptcy, and weakened social protection.

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 food assistance, tax issues, the health-wealth connection, alternatives to banking and the prepaid card industry, and the mortgage crisis. 

As we announced last week, the Asset Building Program and the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis are co-releasing a series of reports, Creating a Financial Stake in College, by William Elliott III on the importance of children's savings and college outcomes. The second report in the series is being released today and is available for download here. The press release from last week is also available here.

Way back in 2011, we conducted a survey of readers that told us a number of things: importantly, we learned that many of you look to us for timely news from the asset building field and that a regular round-up of articles would be a welcome addition to our other content. In keeping with the spirit of 2012 and resolutions and all that good stuff, the Asset Building Program is introducing a new weekly blog feature: a Friday news round-up. We hope this will help you (and us, for that matter) keep up with developments in the field, note-worthy news, and learn about partner organizations working around the U.S. on asset building, economic security, anti-poverty policy, and accessible financial services for low- and middle-income Americans. Topics will vary week-to-week (and depending on the news!) but we’ll aim to provide a diverse overview of the things we’re keeping an eye on that we think you’ll find interesting too.

During one of our recent events, Sheldon Garon of Princeton University and Ray Boshara of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis referred to the weak household balance sheet as one of the core economic challenges of our time, suggesting that households must focus on asset-building rather than rely on credit and debt.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently released findings from a study of American physicians about the links between health and unmet social needs. These needs included basic necessities like adequate nutrition, access to public transportation, and safe housing. Physicians overwhelmingly identified unmet needs as fundamentally related to their patients' health conditions, particularly among lower-income patient populations. Unfortunately, four out of five doctors surveyed (a sample of 1000 primary care physicians and pediatricians) said they did not feel confident in their capacity to meet these needs, which limited the effectiveness of the care they provided. Over half of surveyed doctors said their patients did not have access to the resources they needed to stay healthy. As Jane Lowe of RWJF noted in a press release, "America’s physicians understand that our health is largely determined by forces outside of the doctor’s office. Housing, employment, income and education are key factors that shape our health, especially for the most vulnerable among us.”

As a child, I knew Santa was keeping an eye on me. Not because of that vague "naughty or nice" nonsense, but because my parents had a direct line to the jolly man from the north. A hotline, in fact. When my siblings and I misbehaved, my mother would pick up the phone and start to dial 1-800-YO-SANTA as she warned us that Santa was about to get an earful. She'd inform him that I was picking on my younger brother, or that he had been caught removing the screen in his bedroom window and attempting to climb onto the roof (again). She was such a tattle-tale.

On November 22^nd, 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. (Video from the event is available here.) 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.

Tomorrow, October 20th, Justin King from the Asset Building Program is speaking at a briefing organized by the Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus. See the details below from the briefing invitation.