Discover financial empowerment resources
Discover financial empowerment resources
Working poverty is pervasive, racialized, and until the pandemic, was increasing in Toronto and across Canada. Until the pandemic, this increase was counterintuitive, during 2006 to 2016, as most of this ten-year period had been characterized by one of the most prolonged economic recoveries in...
For most households in America, financial shocks are inevitable. The car will break down. The house will need a repair. A key earner for a household will be laid off. These shocks can be devastating to household finances. And while the COVID-19 pandemic, which we are still recovering from, was a...
The forced transition from in-person to online activities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on how families and communities buy groceries, acquire medical care, and utilize social services. This rapid shift has raised important questions about how to address access and...
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...
This report costs poverty based on three broad measurable components: opportunity costs, remedial costs and intergenerational costs. The authors state that these costs could potentially be reallocated, and benefits could potentially be realized if all poverty were eliminated. The total cost of...
Tables on the income and mobility of immigrants by economic region, and a table on asylum claimant economic outcomes, are now available. These tables use data from the Longitudinal Immigration...
Nearly a year since the outbreak began, and eight months since it was declared a global pandemic, COVID-19 has devastated hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of people’s economic prospects throughout the country. To date, the effects of this crisis have been wide-reaching and profound,...
This article examines how the self-reported health and mental health of people with long-term health conditions or disabilities has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic explored by age, sex and type of reported difficulty. Additionally, the rates of health service disruptions are...
Research has shown that even short-term isolation can have long-term impacts to mental health. Social and community supports are essential for vulnerable persons, especially during times of severe impacts to routine and imposed social distancing. This report discusses the findings of the Rx:...
This paper discusses the concept of disposable income used in the MBM. Disposable income is a measure of the means available to a Canadian family to meet its basic needs and achieve a modest standard of living. The disposable income of families surveyed in the Canadian Income Survey (CIS) is...
This report, 'The Perils of Living Paycheque to Paycheque: The relationship between income volatility and financial insecurity', examines the relationship between income instability and broader measures of financial well-being. This study makes use of a unique dataset that collected...
There is mounting evidence that the issues of financial, physical, and mental health are inexorably linked. Among funders, growing awareness of this intersection is sparking an exciting expansion of focused investments in both asset building and health promotion/disease prevention. This brief will...
This webinar, "Planning a successful community tax clinic in Indigenous communities, Part 2," is the second in a 2-part series sharing information, community examples and promising practices with Ontario First Nation communities and Indigenous organizations to support the launch and planning of...
This webinar, "Planning a successful community tax clinic in Indigenous communities (Part 1)," is part one of two webinars trainings which share information, community examples and promising practices from Ontario First Nation communities and Indigenous organizations. This training will support the...
The Networked Change Report maps out the strategies and practices that made today’s most successful advocacy campaigns work, while so many others failed to create lasting change on the issues they address. We started by identifying advocacy campaigns over the last ten years that achieved...
This paper presents quantitative and qualitative evidence of the relationship between exposure to a community-based Children’s Savings Account (CSA) program and parents’ educational expectations for their children. First, we examine survey data collected as part of the rollout and...
The women’s wealth gap has been largely overlooked in discussions of women’s economic security, yet wealth is the most comprehensive indicator of financial health. Without wealth, families are one paycheck away from financial disaster. The brief Women and Wealth: Insights for...
We have to consider the implications of working poverty in Canada’s richest city. The working poor cannot buy homes on their wages and many use food banks and other services to meet their basic needs. At the same time, shifts in the labour market suggest declining opportunities for a growing...
The widening wealth gap in the United States is a worrisome sign that millions of families nationwide do not have enough in assets to offer better opportunities for future generations. On the basis of data collected using the National Asset Scorecard for Communities of Color (NASCC) survey, we...
This report will provide an overview of a range of programs serving reservation-based Native communities in the Northwest Area Foundation region. The report will start by presenting a conceptual framework for understanding financial capability in Native communities, and a review of the literature...
This reports on research results from an experiment in Malawi that varied the timing of workers' income receipt in two ways. First, payments were made either in weekly installments or as a monthly lump sum, in order to vary the extent to which workers had to save up to make pro table investments....
Enrolled By Six: Peel Post Secondary Strategy is a community impact strategy, rooted in research, to enroll every eligible child in Peel Region in the Canada Learning Bond – Registered Education Savings Plan for post secondary tuition before the age of...
The objective of this project is to adapt life skills and financial literacy curriculum in order to make it more relevant to the urban Aboriginal clientele at the Newo Yotina Friendship Centre (NYFC) and to determine the overall impact of this curriculum on NYFC’s clientele. NYFC is an...
This brief highlights findings from a small-scale pilot that integrated Virtual Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) services at two New York City Head Start programs during the 2013 tax season. The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) coordinated the...
This paper is the text of an address delivered by Sherri Torjman at the conference Welfare Re-form: The Future of Social Policy in Canada held on October 24 and 25, 2013, in Regina. The conference was sponsored by the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of...