The Ladder

A Blog from New America's Asset Building Program

Why Poverty in the U.S. is Worse Than it Seems

  • By
  • Rachel Black
May 18, 2012

Slate's new map of the week plots the U.S. poverty rate by county with data from 2007 to 2010. At first, it reveals a straightforward story: The Great Recession made poverty worse. Everywhere.

As bad as the picture looks, though, it’s actually a rosy rendition.

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Asset Building News Week, May 14-18

  • By
  • Hannah Emple
May 18, 2012
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The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on 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 housing, women in poverty, access to public assistance, banking, student loan debt and inequality.

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White House Summit on Financial Capability and Empowerment

  • By
  • Pamela Chan
May 16, 2012
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Last Thursday, The White House hosted the first ever Summit on Financial Capability and Empowerment.  Did you hear all about it?  Probably not – it somehow slipped the evening news. 

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Towards a New Model for International Research Collaboration: Reflections on the April YouthSave Research Advisory Council Convening and Symposium

May 16, 2012
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By Julia Stevens and Li Zou, Center for Social Development

Cross posted on YouthSave.org

On April 17, 2012, a Symposium on International Research and Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis highlighted the experiences and insights of the international research partners in YouthSave. The event, which was hosted by the Center for Social Development at Washington University’s Brown School, drew an engaged audience of students, researchers, and program representatives with interests in international research and collaboration.

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A Better Way to Make College More Affordable

  • By
  • Rachel Black
May 14, 2012
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This blog post was originaly published on the National Community Tax Coalition's blog WorkForward.

The wrangling over the jump in student loan rates scheduled to take place on July 1st has placed renewed focus on making college affordable. This is critical time to be having this conversation because the value of a college degree is only increasing in the post-recession economy, but, so is the cost of acquiring it.

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Event with Louis Hyman, Author of "Borrow: The American Way of Debt"

  • By
  • Hannah Emple
May 14, 2012
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The Asset Building Program is hosting author Louis Hyman for an event on this Thursday, May 17th to discuss his new book Borrow: The American Way of Debt. Janis Bowdler from National Council of La Raza’s Wealth-Building Policy Project will respond and offer her take on the role debt has played in the economy and consumers’ lives. You can join us in person next Thursday or watch live online.

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Savings Song Launches YouthSave's Financial Education Workshops in Colombia

May 11, 2012
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By Alejandra Montes Saenz, Save the Children Colombia

Cross-posted on YouthSave.org

As part of the overall Financial Capability strategy for Colombia, Save the Children has conducted several launch events in the same schools where the implementation of the financial capability workshops will take place. The overall goal of these events is to gather the students, teachers and school staff and encourage them to start thinking about the importance of saving as a mechanism for young people to achieve their goals and dreams. We used ‘edutainment’ strategies—different forms of entertainment to deliver educational messages—to develop a fun and interactive design for the youths’ first encounter to financial capability topics, so that positive expectations could be built around the upcoming financial capability workshops.

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Asset Building News Week, May 7-11

  • By
  • Hannah Emple
May 11, 2012
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The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on 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 the Millennial generation, homelessness, economic mobility, public benefits, and banking innovation.

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New Report Shows The Saver's Bonus is Still a Great Idea

  • By
  • Rachel Black
May 9, 2012
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It's always gratifying when your assumptions are backed up by evidence. Like, when I thought adding a little coffee to my chocolate cupcakes might take them from "yummy" to "ghahhar (read: sound of Homer Simpson in presence of doughnut)." I had reason to believe this might be so: it had been a successful strategy I'd used in other baking applications. But, to borrow a phrase from my mother, sometime you just don't know until you know.

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What’s really driving the proposed SNAP cuts?

  • By
  • Aleta Sprague
May 9, 2012
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Yesterday, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing about the Farm Bill that focused on some of the proposed reforms to SNAP. Notably, none of the panelists or representatives in attendance really had anything negative to say about the program. It was widely agreed that SNAP has lifted millions of Americans out of poverty, has provided a much-needed boost to the economy, and is one of the most efficient social welfare programs. Nearly 95% of federal SNAP funding goes directly to the benefits that allow families to purchase food; 93% of the benefits go to households with incomes below the poverty line; and fraud and abuse are minimal. So this all begs the question: what’s really driving the proposed SNAP cuts?

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