Related UI Researchers

Publications on Family/Parents

Boosting assets enables individuals and households to invest in life goals and to enhance long-term economic stability and social protections. This fact sheet, drawn from Asset Building and Low-Income Families, presents an array of key statistics.

Fast-changing labor markets and growing economic inequality mean that low-income families need more than stop-gap income support in hard times, according to McKernan and Sherraden, coeditors of the volume. Their analysis finds that building wealth—putting money in a bank account, saving in a retirement fund, owning a home—is vital for the economic security and advancement low-income families. Most government policies ignore this key goal, they point out, and some undermine it. McKernan, Sherraden, and other top experts size up the current data on assets, analyze the benefits of asset holding, and consider policy responses—making the book the first comprehensive review of asset policy.

This chapter was part of an online effort by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and New Democracy Project to offer expert advice to the new administration as part of its Change for America book project (http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2008/changeforamerica/additionalcontributions.html). Washington’s new leadership, its authors say, should build on the Administration for Children and Families’ assets and focus on the interrelated goals of promoting family economic security and promoting healthy child and youth development. These twin goals can best be achieved through new strate­gic investments, capacity building and innovative partnerships, coordination across offices and departments, and collaboration with states and the private sector.

The second edition of Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy from the Urban Institute Press examines the context and impact of teen parenthood and finds no simple relationship between a person’s early parenthood and her or her family’s subsequent health, wealth, or education. Instead, the volume’s 21 contributors find, many personal and economic factors combine to influence the life of a teen parent and her family.

This report explores how Americans have moved up and down the income ladder over the last two decades, and whether it has been more difficult for Americans to get and stay ahead in the last decade. The report focuses on intragenerational mobility: how individuals change economic positions within their own lifetimes.