Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion

This individual section of the report provides information on extra details about what it would take to implement the policy recommendations discussed in the previous section. It discusses topics like, why Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) and the importance of direct cash transfers. It also attempts to address issues that might serve as roadblocks to carrying out the policy agenda laid out in this report such as combining Baby Bond’s and CSAs. This section is best understood within the context of the full report.

We are providing the different sections of the report as individual sections for those who might not want to print the full report. Further, to shorten each individual section the references for each individual section can be found in the full report. 

This individual section of the Financial Independence postconfrence report provides a basic framework for suggesting that income and asset policies must be pursued together to truly solve poverty. It also provides a framework for understanding poverty as a financial capability problem. In doing so, it contends that poverty is not only about today but also the kinds of futures families, and their children can achieve. Produce financially capable people requires that policy provides access to financial institutions, economic resources in the form of income and assets, and financial literacy training.

We are providing the different sections of the report as individual sections for those who might not want to print the full report. Further, to shorten each individual section the references for each individual section can be found in the full report. 

This PDF document provides links to an individual presenter's brief that was prepared as part of the Financial Independence Conference held Sept. 16th and 17th, 2024. The briefs are organized by conference day and session. So, if you look at the agenda you can find when a particular presentation was given and find the link for that presenter's brief.

This individual section of the report provides a set of policy recommendations with the goal of ending poverty and producing financial capable people.

We are providing the different sections of the report as individual sections for those who might not want to print the full report. Further, to shorten each individual section the references for each individual section can be found in the full report. 

This individual section of the report provides key points or takeaways from each full brief included as part of the conference along with a link to the full brief. The takeaways are organized by conference session (Children’s Savings Accounts and Baby Bonds, Income Approaches to Poverty, and Bringing Together Income and Asset Approaches to End Poverty).

We are providing the different sections of the report as individual sections for those who might not want to print the full report. Further, to shorten each individual section the references for each individual section can be found in the full report. 

The goal of the conference Using Wealth and Income Policies to Forge a New Social Contract: Giving People Something to Live For (short title: Financial Independence), held on September 16 and 17, 2024, in Washington, D.C., was to bring together experts from the asset and income fields to share theory, evidence, and best practices as part of an effort to begin a more earnest conversation about the development of a new social contract designed to end poverty. The conference was divided into four sessions. Sessions One and Two focused on Children’s Savings Accounts and Baby Bonds as promising asset-build- ing policy proposals for solving the wealth component of poverty. Session Three focused on Unconditional Cash Transfers, the Child Tax Credit, and Child Allowances as promising income policy proposals for solving the income component of poverty. Because poverty has both an income and asset component, Session Four discussed why a core component of a new social contract to end poverty must include combining these poli- cies and coalitions.

Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) are interventions that seek to build assets for children to use as long-term investments (Goldberg, 2005; Sherraden, 1991), particularly for postsecondary education. Provided through financial institutions, CSAs generally include progressive features, such as initial seed deposits, financial incentives for attaining certain academic benchmarks, or matches for savings deposits (e.g., Elliott & Lewis, 2014). Distinct among financial aid policies for their cultivation of improved outcomes throughout children’s lives, CSAs aim to equip children, particularly those who are disadvantaged, with assets that have demonstrated associations with academic achievement (Elliott, Kite, O’Brien, Lewis, & Palmer, 2016) and educational attainment (Elliott, 2013; Elliott & Beverly, 2011). CSAs also connect households to mainstream financial institutions (Friedline, 2014), activating families to save for their children’s futures and their later financial well-being.

This brief begins by discussing some key areas where the Republican-selected witnesses agree with the eight key principles for designing a national CSA program. Next, four areas where additional convergence would be helpful are discussed. The brief concludes by summarizing the points of convergence, how they align with principles in the 401Kids legislation, and the eight key principles identified by the asset building field.

In this talk I want to make the point that CSAs have become much more than a financial vehicle for individuals to save in. This matters. First, it matters for understanding how to assess whether CSA programs are effective. Second, it matters for combating the myth that building wealth through CSAs continues to be primarily about personal saving. This myth has placed a roadblock between CSA and Baby Bonds movements being able to coalesce around a common financial infrastructure for building wealth for children and their families.

This report summarizes a selection of data from the second administration of the Wabash Early Award Scholarship Program (EASP) student survey. The survey for the second round included two new blocks of questions designed to assess: (a) student awareness of the Early Award Scholarship Program and (b) student college planning activities. A summary of findings from these two new blocks is presented here.

This report describes findings from the first year of a three-year evaluation of Boston Saves, a children’s savings account program offered by the City of Boston through the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development (OWD) in partnership with Boston Public Schools (BPS). Boston Saves automatically provides each student enrolled in kindergarten (K2) in BPS a children’s savings account (CSA) including an initial deposit of $50 from the City of Boston and ongoing opportunities to receive incentives. The money in this account can be used for college or job training expenses after the student finishes high school.

Click Here to View the Infographic.

This impromptu series grapples with issues derailing America from being able to tackle its economic inequality problem. The first paper (which probably should have been the last paper in the series, but that is why this is impromptu which is a nice way to say I did not start off planning a three paper series) deals with issues that stand in the way of the asset field specifically, but the poverty field more generally, uniting in the fight against economic inequality. The second paper pulls back the curtain on narratives that have shaped Americans’ views on the importance of wealth transfers for sustaining the ideal captured in the American dream. The third paper will dive directly into the unique issue of race in America as it relates to economic inequality. The objective of this series is to start a productive conversation on passing meaningful wealth transfer legislation that has the potential to greatly reduce economic inequality in America. Such legislation is not only important for American families, but is a way to strengthen America from both internal and external threats to its democracy. The existence of high levels of economic inequality are a direct threat to the survival of America and demand that we declare war on it today.

Infographic Reference List

Infographic Reference List

Professor William Elliott’s opinion article in the Gotham Gazette argues that poor children and families need both poverty alleviation and child savings programs. Elliott writes, “I am arguing that the drive Americans have demonstrated throughout history comes from more than having enough money to pay the bills each week, it comes from the promise of a better future.”

Child Development Accounts (CDAs)—also called Child Savings Accounts (CSAs)—provide assets and encourage saving and asset building for children. (See the accompanying document, The Case for a Nationwide Child Development Account Policy.) An efficient, trusted, and sustainable system for delivering CDAs is already being implemented in some states. A nationwide policy would require federal funding and changes in policy and practice to deliver CDAs for all children with a seed deposit as early as birth.

Research shows that CDAs have positive effects on asset building and healthy child and family development, with greater effects for people of color and low-income households. Asset building over time is the key to these results. Positive effects for children and families occur even before the money is spent for education.

Investing in children is fundamental for families, communities, and the U.S. economy. Child Development Accounts (CDAs), also called Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs), offer a proven and efficient model for investing in all children.

The Community Foundation of Wabash County’s Promise Scholarship program (Promise Scholars) was conceived and implemented with the goal of improving educational outcomes by providing opportunities to earn scholarship awards at a much earlier stage than traditional scholarship programs. More than just a commitment, deposits are awarded directly into the child’s 529 as they are earned. This approach deviates in important ways from traditional college savings account programs, traditional scholarship programs, and even early commitment scholarship programs. In Promise Scholars, children not only receive a CSA, but they also receive early award scholarships directly, and immediately, rather than as the promise of money in the future.

This report provides an update to 2017 Participation and Savings Patterns in the Wabash County Promise Scholarship Program: Year 1 (O’Brien, Elliott, Lewis & Jung, 2018). The initial 2017 report included all 4th - 8th graders in Wabash County during the 2016-2017 academic year, which also served as the first year of the Wabash County Promise Scholars program. Accumulated savings in Promise Indiana 529s, Promise Scholarship awards and match, and free/reduced lunch status provided by the schools were used to obtain a cross-sectional view of the impact of the first program year. For the current report, we examine enrollment, savings behaviors, and asset accumulation for participants who enrolled in Promise Scholars during the first three academic years of the program: 2016/2017, 2017/2018, and 2018/2019. As with the first report, we include scholarship earnings, 529 savings data to date, as well as free/reduced lunch status provided by the schools to compare savings outcomes across program participants and non-participants and across poor and non-poor families.

Improving educational outcomes for Rhode Island’s K-12 students is essential for the future of the state. While not an end in themselves, standardized tests can be used to measure school and statewide progress and guide accountability efforts. While extensive research has examined how student, family, school, and community factors influence test performance, one factor sticks out: student poverty (Reardon (2011;) (Carnoy & Garcia, 2017;) (Ford, 2011, (Kornrich & Furstenberg (2013;) (Duncan & Murnane, 2011). Because poverty is so closely related to performance, the failure to account for poverty can lead to misleading assessments of school performance, distorting policy efforts.

However, the relationship between poverty and school performance in Rhode Island, and how this should guide policy, is not well understood. Rhode Island currently uses standardized test data to comply with national reporting, benchmark performance, and identify opportunities for improvement. Expecting a fixed level of academic achievement for a certain amount of educational investment per student neglects the substantial variation in student experience and competency due to unequal family resources. A more nuanced understanding of the relationship between poverty and education would help to isolate schools that are performing well, and poorly, relative to their students’ poverty rate. Understanding the performance of Rhode Island relative to Massachusetts, a wealthy state and national leader in education reform, can help to elucidate the role of poverty in driving achievement gaps.

In this context, we used data on student poverty and 2018-2019 standardized test performance for elementary, middle, and high school students in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to examine the relationship between school district-level poverty and performance.

Education is one of the largest investments America makes in reducing poverty and promoting economic mobility. From this perspective, education is perceived by many as a long-term strategy for achieving individual, family, and intergenerational prosperity; a tool for increasing overall productivity; and an engine of economic growth on which our collective fortunes depend. However, like poverty policies in America, education policies have largely focused on providing children with enough financial aid to survive, not enough to thrive. This brief will argue that to deliver on the promise of money, we posit that a better notion of free is to provide low-income and underserved students with targeted ongoing deposits into a Children’s Savings Account from an early age. Further, we should consider integrating this long-term strategy with a long-term education investment, like College Promise (frequently referred to as “free college”) programs, to reverse this damaging trend, build a college going culture within families and their communities, and remove economic barriers to higher education and adult success.

We should not lose sight of moments in our collective history when we, as a country, have dared to dream and, as a result, were able to leap forward. The race to the moon was just such a moment, when we were “pushed” by the Soviet Union’s early advantage in the “space race” to unshackle ourselves from our limited imagination and as a result developed new technology to explore space. The U.S. foster care system needs a similar push to move away from an exclusive focus on survival policies for foster care youth and move toward including an asset-empowered agenda that can provide youth in foster care with the opportunity to thrive. This report looks at adapting CSAs to work better for Foster Care Youth.

This study conducted two cluster randomized trials using household-level random assignment to test the impact of a rewards cards program at two different locations: Wabash County Indiana and the City of St. Louis. Findings show the treatment group in Indiana had a greater than three-fold increase in savings activity in CSAs, and in St Louis had a greater than seven-fold increase in savings activity in CSAs. These findings suggest that rewards cards can be an effective strategy for engaging families of different backgrounds in saving activities. 

Information about the nature and extent of wealth inequality among Whites can play a role in eliminating misconceptions and reframing the discussion about wealth redistribution as essential to restoring hope in the American dream and imperative to improving the life chances of all. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the top quintile of White wealth holders has 212 times as much wealth as the bottom quintile. Further, multi-dimensional descriptive analyses from 1999 to 2015 indicate that median wealth has increased 46% among White households in the top 20% of both the wealth and income distributions. During the same time period, wealth holdings decreased among White household in the bottom 20% of both economic distributions. These data suggest that wealth inequality is a problem not only for Black households in America, but for White households as well. Thus, wealth inequality is not just a question of discrimination and racial disadvantage but is rooted in the fundamental nature of the American economy.