While the expansion of health insurance to young adults has been one of the consistently positive stories around the ACA, a new report points out the news isn’t all that good. The rate of full-time workers between 18 and 24 years old with employer-sponsored insurance dropped 12.8 percent over the past decade, while dropping 8.5 percent for workers ages 25 to 34.
The report’s first chapter, Jobs and the Economy, explores how long-term trends and the current tumultuous economic environment has taken a toll on young Americans’ employment prospects, paychecks, and ultimately their earnings for years to come. Unemployment and underemployment rates for young Americans remain dangerously high, and almost 60 percent of employed young people say they would like to work more hours. At the same time, there is also a clear wage pay gap, gender pay gap, and education pay gap.
A new report from Demos looking at The Economic State of Young America shows that “average [higher education] tuition is three times higher today than in 1980.” “Average tuition at public 4-year colleges was $7,600 in the 2010 academic year, up from $2,100 in 1980,” the report notes, while “average tuition at private 4-year colleges nearly tripled in a generation, increasing from $9,500 in the 1980 academic year to $27,300 in 2010.” At the same time, the federal Pell Grant is covering an ever smaller percentage of th
All sorts of big life decisions are postponed as well, especially within minority groups. Almost half have delayed purchasing a home, a third have delayed moving out on their own or starting a family and a quarter have delayed getting married.
Poverty is often described as one of the most intractable problems facing America. That's nonsense. We know how to make big reductions in poverty with clear-cut public policy solutions.
NEW YORK-- Today's 20-somethings are the first generation, as a whole, to face downward economic mobility compared to their parents' generation, according to a new report from national policy center Demos and youth advocacy organization Young Invincibles.
One enduring mystery of the Republican Party's extreme anti-tax position is who they are speaking for? Does any substantial swath of the American public really oppose tax increases so much that they want this option completely off the table as a means for taming the deficit?
Republican leaders in Congress like to talk about the need to foster more economic "certainty" and "reassure" the markets. Just yesterday, for example, House Speaker John Boehner appealed for cutting social insurance programs on the grounds that "Nothing – nothing – would send a more reassuring message to the markets than taking bipartisan steps to fix the structural problems in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
One enduring mystery of the Republican Party's extreme anti-tax position is who they are speaking for? Does any substantial swath of the American public really oppose tax increases so much that they want this option completely off the table as a means for taming the deficit?
Almost half of single women over the age of 65 face the real crisis of outliving their financial resources. Most have very limited resources and are forced to make daily trade- offs between paying bills, forgoing home maintenance or medical needs. New research shows that economic insecurity among single senior women is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2008—even before the full impact of the Great Recession had been felt—economic insecurity among this population subgroup increased by one-third, from 35 percent to 47 percent.
Listen to anyone talking about Occupy Wall Street and inevitably, rising inequality will emerge as one of the main concerns. And, rightfully so. The United States now has income inequality levels on par with countries like Mexico and Argentina.
While a growing body of research documents the many negative effects of economic inequality, these impacts are not reflected in any national accounting measure. Fortunately, though, there is progress on the state level.
Advocates of low taxes and small government like to say that America's economy -- and our society -- works best when individuals and businesses direct how the nation's wealth is used, and government's hands are kept far from the tiller. The genuis of the market, it is said, is that myriad decisions based on self-interest produce outcomes that maximize overall prosperity and well-being.
NEW YORK-- Recent repeal of the long-term care provision in the Affordable Care Act, has brought renewed importance to the economic security of many vulnerable Americans, particularly seniors. A new research brief, “Rising Economic Insecurity Among Single Senior Women,” published today by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and the national policy center Demos, sheds light on the dire financial state of single women who are most in need of long-term care supports due to their higher life expectancy.
Economic mobility is a tricky subject and it helps to do your homework before offering opinions in this area. Case in point is the recent speech by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan at the Heritage Foundation.
Today the average college grad leaves school with just over $24,000 in debt, an amount that eats up $276 every month if you stretch the payments out over ten years and it’s a government loan with a 6.8 percent interest rate. Of course, one out of five students also carries more costly private loans, where interest rates are in the double digits and fees add to the balance. This debt-for-diploma system is what counts as opportunity in America today.
Critics love to beat up on government for its screw-ups and misfires -- as if these mistakes prove the point that the public sector can't do anything right. Exhibit A of late is the failed loan to Solyndra, which has been seized on as evidence that Washington can't create green jobs or do industrial policy more generally.
Today, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary passed, on a party-line vote, one of the most sweeping attacks in decades on government protections.
The Rules from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) bill would require that any major regulatory rule issued by a federal agency be affirmed by a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The vote would have to take place within 70 days.
One of the most frustrating things about the present moment is that public distrust of government is surging at exactly the moment when we need a bold and effective public sector. Worse, while Americans now seem ready to tackle the biggest problem of recent decades -- rising inequality -- it's easy to derail such action in the face of widespread distrust of government.
