Discover financial empowerment resources
Discover financial empowerment resources
This is the second brief in a new series from The Financial Clinic. Change Matters leverages the data gathered through our revolutionary financial coaching platform, Change Machine, alongside the voices, wisdom, and lived experiences of Change Machine customers. We hope that our action oriented...

Building on the Asset Funders Network’s the Health and Wealth Connection: Investment Opportunities Across the Life Course brief, this paper details: What we know about the health-wealth connection for adults. Why investment in integration is important. How philanthropy can contribute to...

This report examines data from the Federal Reserve System’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances to understand how the wealth of median Black, Latino and White families have changed since the findings of its previous survey were released in...

Women own, on average, only 32 cents for every $1 owned by a man in America. Women of color have even less. Both the gender wage gap and the gender wealth gap need to be taken into account to address threats to women's economic...

This new Poverty Trends Scorecard consisting of four reports now presents an update of the information on income, wealth, and inequality. Over three years later, the recovery has yet to fully take hold. The individuals and families who bore the brunt of the 2008–09 recession face continuing...
In this chapter I examine whether and how the relationship between family socioeconomic characteristics and academic achievement has changed during the last fifty years. In particular, I investigate the extent to which the rising income inequality of the last four decades has been paralleled by a...
By 2003, the savings and asset building field had achieved critical research and policy successes. However, some challenges it faced were the lack of a substantial presence of organizations of color in the field and the absence of experts of color at decision-making tables. Over the course of 11...
This is the slide deck from a webinar by Community Action Partnership for the CFED, on the racial wealth divide and the challenge of wealth building for families of color in the United States. Racial Inequality has always had economic inequality at its foundation....
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The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. Credit Suisse recently revealed that the richest 1% have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together.1 This occurred a year earlier than Oxfam’s much publicized prediction ahead of last year’s World Economic Forum....
We define precarious employment as having an outsized level of uncertainty, whether in terms of pay, ongoing employment, scheduling, or other dimensions. Types of work associated with precarious employment are typically lower paying, with an income gap of between $11,600 and $18,000 in 2014...
Good public policy matters and has been effective in reducing child poverty. Indeed, without government transfers over 2 million children would live in poverty. However, to date, policy inputs against poverty have been small and poverty reduction too limited. History has shown us that no one-off...
This report focuses on the role that policy design can have on closing the country’s unrelenting and unacceptable racial wealth divide. We utilize a new framework—The Racial Wealth Audit—launched jointly by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University (IASP) and Demos to...
The federal government’s decision this year to cancel family income splitting and lower the annual contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts was driven largely by concerns about income inequality. Research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Parliamentary Budget Officer and...
This is a brief presentation by Ray Boshara from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It shows data from the Survey of Consumer Finances "financial health scorecard." Results show the disparities in wealth for already vulnerable families, and differences by age, ethnicity, and education. No...
A substantial number of immigrants are not only blocked from entering the professions for which they trained and were then recruited to Canada, but a substantial portion of them are not in any type or form of secure employment. Instead, Canadian newcomers often face substandard, precarious and...
Approximately 2 million Ontarians live in low-income households, many allocating a significant portion of their finances to powering their homes. In these situations, electricity costs can force individuals to have to decide between paying energy bills and providing for other essential food,...
This Report on Equality Rights of People with Disabilities presents a national portrait of people with disabilities compared to people without disabilities based on seven dimensions of well-being, considered critical from an equality rights perspective. They are: economic well-being, education,...
As Congress debates a long-term path to American economic growth, American households confront their own daunting challenges to economic security and success. While tight budgets, polarized politics and a skeptical public constrain policymakers’ ambitions, Americans have yet to recover from the...
Approaching anti-poverty work from this view point asks that we re-think the social compact between government and its constituents. It demands that we think beyond reactive policies focused narrowly on crisis intervention and preservation of the safety net, to policies that aim to proactively help...
Almost all poverty measures commonly used in Canada work by setting a dollar amount – a poverty line – below which a household is said to be in poverty, above which a household is not considered poor. But when we measure poverty only according to income, we may incorrectly assess whether or not...
Toronto is facing a big problem. As access to opportunity is increasingly out of reach for too many that live here, the reputation of “Toronto the Good” is being compromised. Because of the concentration of poverty, declining job quality and rising income inequality, we are seeing that Toronto...
The Foundation partners with many researchers to produce the Toronto’s Vital Signs® Report. The Report is compiled from current statistics and studies, identifying progress we should be proud of and challenges that need to be addressed. It is a consolidated snapshot of the trends and issues...
The rise of economic inequality has become a staple of policy debates and stump speeches. Less visible is the way the rise has altered the landscape of America’s urban neighborhoods. Two books should help change that. Matthew Desmond, an urban sociologist at Harvard, has delivered a jolt with...
Confused about how Canadian households are doing financially? Financial experts, policymakers, and media tell a conflicting story. What is really happening? This presentation is based on data from the Canadian Survey of Financial Capability in 2008 and 2014. It shows the state of Canadian financial...