JUST IDEAS
Improving Policy, Improving LivesHere’s how we can boost youth employment
Nearly 10 years into an economic recovery, young people in the United States are still struggling. Youth unemployment rates are double that of the prime-age U.S. population, and an estimated 4.6 million individuals ages 16-24 are neither in school nor working. Youth of color face disproportionately higher disconnection rates and additional barriers to school and career success. Young people are forced to navigate too many uncoordinated, underfunded systems — often on their own.
Hutchison, Dutta-Gupta: WV needs Congress to go big on COVID relief
Originally published by the West Virginia Charleston Gazette-Mail. West Virginia families are struggling. One in seven adults in the state struggle with hunger. One in five households with children in the state reported that the kids weren’t eating enough because the...
Untangling Unemployment Assistance Benefits in 2020: A Flow Chart
GCPI, the National Employment Law Project, and the Century Foundation created a flowchart to clarify which pandemic-response or regular unemployment assistance benefits may be available to workers from late March 2020 through late December 2020 and under which circumstances.
To help communities of color, Congress must extend the $600-a-week boosted unemployment benefit until the economy recovers
An overdue reckoning is sweeping America. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others have sparked a national conversation on police brutality and mass incarceration. As we grapple with these wounds, we must remember that structural racism damages these same communities every day without any damning videos, and without any guns drawn.
Anti-Monopoly Fund announces second round of investments
The Anti-Monopoly Fund is thrilled to announce its second round of investments to 14 organizations, including the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality’s Economic Security and Opportunity Initiative, to bolster the ongoing fight against monopoly power in every facet of our economy, democracy, and society.
Numbers are in: Government can actually fix poverty
Originally posted on The Hill. Homelessness is one of the most visible and pervasive features in nearly every American city. But what most Americans don’t know is that homelessness was a far more limited problem until the 1980s. What changed? Our policies. In 1970,...
A Gender-Equitable Recovery Requires Saving the States
As we near the end of July, it is clear our overlapping health and economic crises show no sign of abating—in fact, they are on the verge of becoming much worse. Congress and the president now face crucial and urgent choices in averting a depression and creating a recovery that addresses the pain that has been disproportionately exacted on women.
Accelerating Education, Slowing Mobility
Economic mobility is little more than a myth for most people who grow up in families with low incomes. A child born in poverty in the early 1980s had single-digit chances of having a high income as an adult. If we want to simply raise incomes from one generation to the next, we’re failing. Nearly all Americans born in 1940 had incomes higher than their parents’ by the time they reached the same age, but today, only half of adults born in 1980 make more than their parents did.
A cynical way to make poor people disappear
The Trump administration has proposed a change in the way the federal government measures poverty. On the surface, this proposal may appear to be an innocuous, technical adjustment. It’s not. Instead, this change would dramatically reduce the number of people who qualify for vital basic assistance programs, including Medicaid, children’s health care and food assistance.
Statement on Continued Anti-Immigrant Actions by the Trump Administration
The Trump Administration’s vicious anti-immigrant actions warrant condemnation from decent people everywhere. Policies that separate families, deny basic provisions in border facilities, and take away access to food and shelter are having a deeply destructive, long-term impact on immigrant families and communities.