Ownership & Assets

Editor's note: This blog post was authored by David Zuckerman, Research Associate with The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland. 

Study after study tell us that socioeconomic factors contribute more greatly to overall health than lack of access to healthcare. And few statistics are more powerful than the fact the zip code you live in is a better determinant of your life expectancy than your genetic code. When eight-and-a-half miles can result in a difference in life expectancy of more than 20 years, the local hospital’s quality of care is not at fault. Instead, the culprit is the lack of community wealth in the poorest neighborhoods.

To achieve their mission of promoting health, hospitals would do well to focus not just on providing acute-care services in the low-income communities they serve, but on building wealth in those communities. Policymakers, community organizers, and public health advocates should recognize the tremendous opportunity to leverage nonprofit hospitals’ reported revenues of more than $650 billion and assets of $875 billion (as of August 2012) to transform neighborhoods and build assets for residents.

Editor's note: This blog post was authored by Karen Harris, Director of Asset Opportunities at the Shriver Center.

For many retired Americans, the potential for financial insecurity is great. Although our government provides a modest monthly Social Security check ($1,152 on average) to retirees, Social Security was never meant to be the sole source of an individual’s retirement income. While $1,152 might be just barely enough money for a young healthy individual, being elderly is much more expensive. Among people who reach the age of 65, 70% will eventually require long-term health care and 30% will eventually receive nursing home care. The average cost of a semi-private nursing home room is $215 per day or $78,000 per year. Yet, according to the Social Security Administration, Social Security benefits constitute 50-90% of income for more than 33% of Social Security Recipients, and 90 to 100% for more than 31% of recipients. This means that about two out of three Social Security recipients over-rely on Social Security.

In order for retirees to avoid over-relying on Social Security, they must prepare during their working years. However, 49% of Americans say they are not saving any money for retirement. A 2012 Woodstock Institute Report shows that the lack of savings is primarily a problem of access to savings mechanisms. The report finds that across all Illinois state legislative districts at least 50% of full-time workers are not offered an employer sponsored retirement savings plan. As the Assets Report infographic shows, lower-income workers are much less likely to have access to these plans.

In order to address this widespread retirement problem, the Illinois Asset Building Group (IABG), along with the Shriver Center, AARP, SEIU and many other organizations are working to pass S.B. 2400/H.B. 2461 The Automatic IRA Program Act. This bill, sponsored by Senator Daniel Biss and Rep. Deborah Mell, would provide all full time workers in Illinois access to retirement savings accounts.

Editor’s note:This blog post was authored by Jerry Kelly, National Director of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Ready.Save.Grow. campaign. 

Encouraged by recent economic gains and lower levels of household debt, Americans are seeking greater financial stability by making saving a priority.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, we saved 6.5 percent of our disposable personal income in December 2012, up from 3.4 percent in December 2011. That translates to $805.2 billion in annual savings.

At the same time, however, the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) reports that almost half of our households don’t have enough savings to fall back on in the event of an emergency.

Editor’s note: The National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, and National CAPACD hosted an event,“The Attorneys General Settlement and Communities of Color: Exploring the Challenge and Promise of Principle Reduction,” Wednesday at New York University’s Constance Milstein Center in Washington, D.C. The following is a reflection on the event, the National Mortgage Settlement, and its impact on communities of color.

Judging by the audience’s response to the keynote speaker at Wednesday’s event, the implementation of the National Mortgage Settlement leaves a lot to be desired. The audience, in large part consisting of housing advocates from such diverse and reputable institutions as the Center for Responsible Lending and the National Urban League, enthusiastically engaged the speaker, whom many see as the public face of the settlement’s slow and unsatisfactory implementation process. The keynote speaker, Joseph Smith, the court-appointed monitor at the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight and the individual charged with fulfilling the expansive promises of the settlement, was met with tough questions from advocates whose daily work is the securing of fair mortgages for financially troubled families in their communities. Despite his defensive position, he took the criticisms generously, because, he explained, the very purpose of these events is not only to allow community stakeholders and housing advocates to hear about the progress of the settlement, but also to allow the monitor to hear from concerned community members about problems of implementation in the field. To this extent, the event was a success.

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 household balance sheet, cash and payments, higher education, housing, and public benefits.

Editor's note: This blog post, authored by Eliza French, originally appeared on New America's In the Tank blog.

America is a nation of paradox. In a country where more than one in three people are obese, one in six are food insecure. A single state, Mississippi, leads the nation in both obesity and hunger. A Place at The Table, a documentary about hunger in America that premieres March 1, traces the stories of those who struggle with hunger across America. On February 25, New America NYC hosted a pre-release screening of the film and a conversation afterwards with co-directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson, executive producer Tom Colicchio, and  Linda P. Fried, dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

A new study out today from Brandeis University’s Institute for Assets and Social Policy (IASP) shows that the wealth gap between black and white Americans has roughly tripled since the 1980s. Let that sink in for a moment. In 1984, the gap in median wealth between black and white Americans amounted to roughly $85,000. (Remember that wealth is a measure of everything a person owns, minus what they owe. This figure represents the gap, rather than total holdings of either group.) By 2009, the black-white wealth gap had soared to $236,500. To put that in perspective, the median price of a house in 2009 was $216,700, according to Census figures.

As Michael Fletcher writes for the Washington Post, we’ve seen important progress toward racial equality over the past quarter century or so: more black Americans are graduating from college and entering into positions of public office, for example. But despite these markers of progress in place, the racial wealth gap is persistent and widening.

As the Wall Street Journal explains, the IASP study makes an important contribution to answering why this is so. By studying a large set of households over a 25 year period, IASP researchers can show which factors contribute most to the gap.

Last year I analyzed four myths about payday lending that the Pew Charitable Trust’s “Payday Lending in America” project proved to be highly suspect in the first iteration of their study on borrowers. Their newest report (How Borrowers Choose and Repay Payday Loans) goes into more depth, revealing a love-hate relationship between borrowers and high-cost, short term loans. The report tells a conflicting story of dependence, need, stress, relief, and any other emotion associated with finances that you could think of. Borrowing from the Mythbusters again, here’s the skinny on Pew’s new report.

At this week's "Can America Save Itself?" event, attendees were able to hear four distinct policy proposals that would work to increase the amount and rate of savings for American families. Not necessarily barn-burning stuff for the average viewer.

This is America Saves Week, which is an annual campaign that encourages nationwide discussion on savings and promotes good savings behavior. For those of us in the asset-building field, this is an opportunity to elevate research on the relationship between savings and life outcomes. This research can help justify the importance of good savings behavior, especially when these habits and behaviors start early in life. So in honor of America Saves Week, here are some of the research highlights from the asset-building field. Specifically, these highlights come from our research at the Assets and Education Initiative (AEDI) at the University of Kansas School of Welfare, where we are studying the relationship between children's savings and their financial and educational outcomes later in life.