Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 11/28/2011 @ 04:30 PM

Tags: Financial Empowerment, Recommended Reading

Andrea Levere

This morning, CFED’s President Andrea Levere was a featured guest on “Forum with Michael Krasny” on KQED Public Radio in San Francisco. Andrea discussed topics from economic mobility to the racial wealth gap with Krasny and Erin Currier, Project Manager for Pew Research Center’s Economic Mobility Project. You can download the 51-minute recording of the “Forum” discussion here.

“Savings is critical, not just for the financial value, but also for the psychological value,” Levere said, describing the importance of giving low- and moderate-income people the tools they need to save. What’s important to note, Levere argues, is that it’s not just about having a job or having a savings account, especially when it comes to minority communities. “There’s not just one route” to financial security, but a “combination of routes” that are required, especially given the complicated financial landscape facing so many Americans.

During the discussion, Levere also discussed the importance of Children’s Savings in enhancing economic mobility. As Currier mentions in the “Forum” segment, the seeming lack of mobility doesn’t mean people are stuck where they are forever. For example, CFED finds that children who have savings accounts for college in their own name are seven times more likely to go to college than those students who do not. In other words, with the right tools, people can achieve upward mobility. The challenge, then, as Levere and Currier concur, is figuring out how to ensure those tools are made available.

A number of valuable resources were referenced during the “Forum” discussion, so we wanted to provide links to them here.

• CFED’s Upside Down: The $400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget
• CFED’s Household Financial Security Framework
• San Francisco’s Kindergarten-to-College (K2C) Initiative
• Bank On (an initiative dedicated to financial access)
• San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment

If you’re looking for more information or resources you don’t see here, don’t hesitate to let us know by sending us an email.

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