Transforming 529 College Savings Plans: Grow Assets for Everyone, Grow the Country

In this essay from The Future of Building Wealth: Brief Essays on the Best Ideas to Build Wealth—for Everyone, Michael Sherraden and Margaret M. Clancy identify the need for a structural solution to “the dysfunction of current asset-building policy” in the United States. They propose a nationwide Child Development Account policy to be implemented through a federal-state collaboration that would transform state 529 college savings plans into asset-building vehicles for every child at birth. “A federally guided CDA policy, vigorously implemented, would serve as a structure for addressing inequalities in wealth, child development and economic opportunity,” Sherraden and Clancy assert. “The nation would grow stronger.”

Projects: SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK); College Success: Increasing Access through Inclusion in 529 Plans