According to the Federal Reserve Board’s May 2023 report Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022, nearly four in 10 US adults reported that they couldn’t cover a $400 emergency expense with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement.
The Federal Reserve Board noted, the higher savings aren’t
Imagine a 12-year-old girl, named Merah, who aspires to be a female legislator in her country when she grows up but who cannot continue her schooling because there is no secondary school in her community. She and other girls like her are not allowed to shuttle back and forth to neighboring communities to attend school,
It’s time to take action to support women workers in global supply chains
BSR’s HERproject, Gap Inc., P.A.C.E, CARE and Better Work have come together to form a new initiative called RISE: Reimagining Industry to Support Equality in order to scale impact and accelerate equality for women workers in global garment, footwear and home furnishings supply chains.
The
As has been explored in earlier articles on this blog, there are numerous obstacles – political, social, and structural – that prevent the integration of women into the Indian economy on equitable terms and footing with their male counterparts. These issues are deeply rooted in the Indian economy and society more broadly, and addressing them
India is a country where gender inequality has been a crucial issue for generations. Starting at a very young age, girls face a variety of barriers that contribute to unequal economic and educational opportunities. The empowerment of women, both through education of girls and employment of women, has a direct impact on the Indian economy.
This op-ed was originally published in Project Syndicate.
Following the steep economic downturns brought about by COVID-19, policymakers should be asking or rethinking fundamental questions. None is more fundamental than whether rapid economic growth is the best way to drive development and help struggling communities escape poverty.
For good reason, economic growth has long been
With COP26, the UN’s climate change conference, on the horizon next year in Glasgow, all eyes are on securing the decarbonisation of the global economy. What this will mean and how it will be achieved will be hotly debated before, during and after the conference.
Thanks to COVID-19, the world has experienced an extraordinary simulation of
While the presidential race has dominated the 2020 election, there are many other important decisions facing American voters. Here are 17 proposals on ballots around the country that, if approved, would go a long way towards reducing economic inequality.
Tax increases on the wealthy and corporations
The risks of algorithmic discrimination and bias have received much attention and scrutiny, and rightly so. Yet there is another more insidious side-effect of our increasingly AI-powered society — the systematic inequality created by the changing nature of work itself. We fear a future where robots take our jobs, but what happens when a significant
Inequality has been seizing ever more of the public’s attention in recent years, reflected everywhere from papal encyclicals and economic tomes by French socialists to technical academic debates and the demotic language of politicians and pundits. The health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have further elevated
Socioeconomic inequality is one of the most pressing issues American society is grappling with. How does it play out over generations and how have those inequalities led to discrepancies in wealth, especially for people of color?
This year’s Boston University Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) annual Learn More series focused on an exploration of social class, featuring
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and the resulting recession is best understood in the context of what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past 40 years. These four decades marked a period of growing economic inequality and slower growth that left the economy and our workers and
As Congress remains deadlocked on a new coronavirus economic stimulus package, two new studies show at least 6 million more people in the US are in poverty due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A study from Columbia University published on Thursday found that the number of Americans in poverty grew by
There is growing concern about the possible distributive consequences of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which has prompted many to look at past experiences for insights. After all, recent studies of long-term tendencies in wealth and income inequality have underlined the role played by major pandemics (Alfani 2020a, 2020b). Much of this literature has focused mostly
America’s persistent racial income and wealth gaps are the result of four intertwined factors: housing, education, business ownership and access to credit. Closing these gaps would facilitate inter-generational wealth creation for Black America and also expand the nation’s economy by $5 trillion over the next five years. These findings come from an extensive report newly-released
As we stagger into the seventh month of the pandemic, the labor market remains deeply troubled. But while the coronavirus is hurting working people, especially lower-income workers, it is exacerbating underlying inequalities in the economy, not fundamentally reshaping the job market. Our labor policies need to restore worker power and encourage greater equality, pandemic or no
The global impacts of climate change are inherently unequal. Very often, the most severe damages from droughts, hurricanes, and other disasters occur in places that are least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s not to say that the US and EU don’t experience disasters, of course. And when they do, the dollar cost of
Trust in public institutions is linked to fewer COVID-19 deaths, but trust and belonging to groups is associated with more deaths, according to a wide-ranging, McGill-led study of 30-day COVID-19 mortality rates in 84 countries. Greater economic inequality is also associated with COVID-19 mortality.
The study led by McGill researchers published in Social Science & Medicine, is
