“What It’s Worth: Strengthening the Financial Future of Families, Communities and the Nation” includes 40 essays by the nation’s leading experts on economics, financial services, public policy and philanthropy from across a broad range of sectors.
Every kindergartner enrolled this year in St. Louis City public and charter schools is receiving a college savings account, Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones said at the official launch of the College Kids program.
Israel’s parliament has passed a law funding long-term savings accounts for all newborns, based on a proposal developed by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, associate director of the Center for Social Development, and on research efforts led by Michael Sherraden, director of CSD.
When Molly Metzger was a PhD student, the time came for her to draft research questions for her dissertation. She drew a blank. After three years in classrooms, she felt out of touch with her topic: low-income housing.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced the national launch of the myRA program, a government-backed retirement plan for people who don’t have access to a retirement savings plan at work or who haven’t found an easy enough way to save.
In 2010, researchers in the vast YouthSave Initiative started investigating whether low-income youth can build savings in the developing countries of Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Nepal. Now their findings are summarized in a newly released report.
More than 100 people gathered in St. Louis in October to hear leading experts discuss the latest research, funding, program and account-structure ideas in the growing field of Child Development Accounts.
Warning that “we are going to see many more Fergusons in this country,” Richard Rothstein recounts the history of government’s role in racial segregation, in a video created for our event “Inclusive Housing: A Public Forum for Policy Action in St. Louis.”
Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, stark racial and economic segregation in housing continues. On Oct. 22, the Center for Social Development and the Clark-Fox Policy Institute hosted “Inclusive Housing: A Public Forum for Policy Action in St. Louis.”
A woman in Tennessee sells her plasma twice a week to help her family of four survive. She has little cash, about $2 a day, but she has a lot of company. The number of families living on $2 per person, per day, has soared to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children.
YouthSave researchers gathered recently in Washington, D.C., to discuss what they learned over five years about how to provide scalable saving mechanisms to low-income youth—and what their findings could mean for youth development and financial inclusion.
Answering the call to participate in the Smart Decarceration Initiative’s first conference, about 150 people from throughout the country gathered September 24-27 at Washington University in St. Louis to work on redefining justice in America.
The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday confirmed a grant to St. Louis YouthBuild of $1.06 million to support academic and occupational skills training for at-risk youth. Washington University is is a partner with YouthBuild, a relationship that was seeded by an event early this year initiated by the Center for Social Development.
Melvin L. Oliver, PhD, a nationally recognized expert on racial and urban inequality, delivered a major speech Wednesday at Washington University in St. Louis, interspersing it with more than a dozen books he recommends.
The Ferguson Commission in its report released this week called for universal Child Development Accounts that are statewide and automatic.
The United States faces the tremendous challenge of reducing its overreliance on prisons and jails. As the social and economic costs of incarceration rise, great need—and opportunity—exists to reverse the trend. The new Smart Decarceration Initiative, based at the Center for Social Development, is taking up the challenge.
Israel’s parliament will consider a state budget this fall that includes funding for long-term savings accounts for all newborns, a proposal authored by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, the associate director of the Center for Social Development, and based on research efforts led by Michael Sherraden, PhD, the director of CSD.
An experimental Individual Development Account had no effect on whether participants opened a retirement account or on the adequacy of their retirement savings, according to a newly published article in the Journal of Gerontological Social Work.
At the Center for Social Development, we believe that financial security should be lifelong, starting at birth and extending from childhood through adulthood. Today CSD is proud to join CFED and more than a dozen other partners in launching the Campaign for Every Kid’s Future.
Most young people in Sub-Saharan Africa are not saving money, and an article in the journal Global Social Welfare explains what helps or hurts them in their efforts.
In the United States, the largest Child Development Account (CDA) programs have been built on existing college savings plans, often called 529 plans after the relevant section of the Internal Revenue Code.
CSD Director Michael Sherraden, PhD, was awarded the Richard Lodge Prize for 2015. He received the prize on May 8 at the Adelphi University School of Social Work’s annual Alumni and Friends Day.
If you’ve ever wondered about the green icons on the top and bottom of CSD’s website pages, here’s a quick explanation.
A well-known economist, Dr. Steuerle is an Urban Institute fellow and co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
Tax-time savings programs help low- and moderate-income families save significantly more of their refunds than those who choose not to participate, finds an analysis of such a program called $aveNYC.
People in the field of social work are crucial to broadening how to think about the poor and their financial decision making, Camille Busette, PhD, said in the keynote speech at the 2015 Convening on Financial Capability & Asset Building: Advancing Education, Research, and Practice in Social Work.
Robert Putnam grew up in Port Clinton, Ohio. Back then, in the 1950s, children from both sides of the tracks in his working-class town went to school together, played sports together, knew each other and watched out for each other.
The Great Recession exposed the financial fragility of millions of American families. Now researchers and policymakers are striving to improve the next generation’s grasp of personal finance and its access to safe financial products.
Robert D. Putnam is famous for his best-selling book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” which warned that Americans were withdrawing from each other and from civic life.
A groundbreaking project examining the attitudes and practices of young people in developing economies toward saving money has led to new findings that confirm and challenge assumptions about youth saving at formal financial institutions.
Singapore’s innovative response to its rough and vulnerable beginning has shaped the first 50 years of the island country, Michael Sherraden said Wednesday, speaking to a crowd gathered at the National University of Singapore for his public lecture marking Singapore’s 50th Anniversary as an independent nation.
The associate director of the Center for Social Development urged U.S. senators on Thursday to create long-term asset-building policies and to use such “golden moments” as tax time to urge Americans to save.
While many Americans took a big financial hit during the Great Recession, homeowners were less likely than renters to lose very large proportions of their wealth, finds a new study from the Center for Social Development in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Financial Capability & Asset Building initiative was highlighted Tuesday during a celebration showcasing four Washington University in St. Louis initiatives funded by a $5.3 million gift from Wells Fargo Advisors.
Two new laws in St. Louis will expand housing options for Section 8 renters in the city. Alderwoman Christine Ingrassia sponsored the measures, which were influenced by recent research at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Singapore launch of the Next Age Institute is on Monday, February 23, at the National University of Singapore. The event will feature Singapore’s Senior Minister of State Amy Khor as the guest of honor.
Young people from Kansas, Missouri and Illinois gathered to hear Dorothy Stoneman, the founder and CEO of YouthBuild USA Inc., speak about transforming themselves and their communities.
“The real problem is that there has always been more than one version of capitalism,” renowned author, commentator and sociologist Xavier (“Xav”) de Souza Briggs, said Thursday in his speech “Toward a Just and Inclusive America,” at Washington University in St. Louis.