Local Interventions for Financial Empowerment through Utility Payments initiative (LIFT-UP) was a two-year pilot project conducted by the National League of Cities (NLC) in five cities. LIFT-UP offers city leaders a “win-win” scenario, allowing city utilities to recoup lost revenue due to...

These are the webinar slides from the Center for Financial Security webinar on the LIFT-UP program approach to municipal financial empowerment with the National League of...

Across the country, municipal Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) provide hundreds of thousands of young people, often from low-income communities, with short-term work experience and a regular paycheck. Building off this existing, widespread infrastructure and connection to young people, the...

This report examines the financial health and vulnerability of households in Canada’s 35 largest cities, using a new composite index of household financial health at the neighbourhood level, the Neighbourhood Financial Health Index or NFHI. The NFHI is designed to shine a light on the dynamics...

The Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty 2020 Impact Report is the Tamarack Institute's first attempt at capturing and communicating national trends in poverty reduction and the important ways in which member Cities Reducing Poverty collaboratives are contributing to those changes. This...

This is the slide deck for the webinar presentation by the Cities of Migration project from the United Nations. This webinar presents research on refugrees and their reliance on technology as an aspect of improving well-being and access to humanitarian...

Bank On coalitions are locally-led partnerships between local public officials; city, state, and federal government agencies; financial institutions; and community organizations that work together to help improve the financial stability of unbanked and underbanked individuals and families in their...

This report describes the rationale and design of a project that will carefully implement and evaluate an innovative program — called Learn$ave — that aims to help low-income Canadians build savings for use in enhancing their labour market skills through adult education and micro-enterprise...

PEW conducted a nationally representative survey of more than 7,000 American households, as well as led focus groups in three cities (Boston, Phoenix, and Orlando). The goal was to collect data on family balance sheets, Americans’ perceptions of their financial security, and how their views...

Bank On coalitions are locally-led partnerships between local public officials; city, state, and federal government agencies; financial institutions; and community organizations that work together to help improve the financial stability of unbanked and underbanked individuals and families in their...

In the ongoing national debate over economic opportunity and rising inequality, one important factor is consistently overlooked—the price of housing in elite urban cores. Kotkin’s essay deepens our understanding of inequality and challenges the conventional wisdom about how and where we should...

A considerable momentum has developed around the perceived need for a national affordable housing strategy. The design of any such strategy should recognize who is in need, the size of the need, and where that need is greatest. This report presents facts on the affordability of housing for those...

New York City’s Earned Sick Time Act (Paid Sick Leave Law) created the legal right to sick leave for 3.4 million private and non-profit sector workers. For one third of those workers—nearly 1.2 million—the Paid Sick Leave Law (PSL) marked the first time they had access to this vital workplace...

Financial empowerment (FE) is an approach to poverty reduction that focuses on improving the financial security of people living on low income. Evidence shows that embedding FE interventions into municipal welfare, employment, housing, shelter and health services can significantly boost service...

In most cases, allowable uses of CSAs are limited to higher education initially, with some allowance for homeownership, entrepreneurship, or other capital investment later. Although, more recent proposals for CSAs also include tiered structures so that children could access some savings while still...

More than $3.89 billion in federal income taxes have been returned to those with modest wages as a result of free tax preparation services offered by IRS-certified volunteers in 2014. A new breakdown of national IRS data shows that tax preparers at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites and...

This report provides measures of financial inclusion including elements of financial resilience and a newly-created score on financial well-being. Twenty-six countries and economies, including 12 OECD countries, participated in this international survey of financial literacy, using the 2018...

Financial education has become an important complement to market conduct and prudential regulation and improving individual financial behaviours a long-term policy priority in many countries. The OECD and its International Network on Financial Education (INFE) conducts research and develops tools...

In 2014, with funding from the Citi Foundation, the CFE Fund launched Summer Jobs Connect (SJC) to directly fund 1,850 jobs for low- and moderate-income youth and help five cities integrate financial education and access to mainstream financial products into municipal Summer Youth Employment...

The four basic pillars of any professional field—quality, consistency, accountability, and community – are attracting increasing focus from financial empowerment stakeholders across multiple sectors. When the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund and Citi Community Development released a call...

The report begins by defining and quantifying Canadian financial exclusion and then presents various theories offered to explain it. It then proceeds to provide a set of suggestions as to how banking services can become more relevant for low-income households. Finally, it runs through a set of...

This National Indigenous Economic Strategy for Canada is the blueprint to achieve the meaningful engagement and inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian economy. It has been initiated and developed by a coalition of national Indigenous organizations and experts in the field of economic...

The economic health of cities and communities depends on the financial health and stability of their residents. Economically secure families are better able to weather temporary income drops independently and are less likely to rely on local services for housing support and cash assistance....

View the 8 videos created by the Financial Consumer Association of Canada (FCAC) as part of the National Financial Literacy Strategy 2021-2026. Videos include:  Make change that counts: Introducing FCAC’s National Financial Literacy Strategy Communicate in ways people understand Build...

In August 2018, the Government of Canada announced Opportunity for All – Canada's First Poverty Reduction Strategy. The Strategy included a commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goal's target of reducing poverty by 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2030. Opportunity for All included the adoption...