Cash-strapped older Americans are racking up credit card debt faster than other consumers amid dwindling retirement portfolios and rising medical costs, a study shows.
The study, which will be released Tuesday by Demos, a liberal public policy group, shows that low- and middle-income consumers 65 and older carried $10,235 in average card debt last year, up 26% from 2005. Card debt for all borrowers surveyed rose 3% during that time, to $9,827.
People age 65 and up carried an average of $10,235 credit card debt in 2008, according to a study released Tuesday by Demos, a public policy research group. That's an increase of 26% since the organization's last survey of low- and middle-income borrowers in 2005. The average debt for all borrowers in the survey rose just 3%, to $9,827, during that same time period.
Part of a Demos series of reports on deregulation showing that often the most significant impact is on the quality and reliability of work — in this case, on port trucking.
Over the past eight years, even as the U.S. signed a number of new bilateral trade pacts, the U.S. government actually decreased its capacity for promoting strong labor standards and enforcing the labor provisions of trade agreements. The Bush Administration sought to slash funding for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) at the U.S. Department of Labor and, though it wasn't entirely successful in this effort, it still managed to significantly downsize the agency.
This report presents new evidence of how trade-related job losses are impacting women workers. It shows how women workers are concentrated in industries which have been drastically affected by the surge in cheap imports over the past decade. The report also shows that current policy responses to dislocations faced by women workers are woefully insufficient, with many laid off women workers receiving little help in securing comparably paying jobs or handling family obligations as they participate in retraining and conduct employment searches.
Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes because of loans that were often not fully explained or under¬stood. Beyond the Mortgage Meltdown distills the origins and nature of the crisis in the housing market. Senior Fellow James Lardner highlights the complicity of regulators and lawmakers in the genesis of the mortgage epidemic, and warns that bolder steps will be needed to stem the rate of foreclosures along with its broader economic impact to protect both markets and consumers against future catastrophe.
Brenda Wright, director of the Democracy Program at the nonprofit group Demos, one of the groups behind the lawsuits, said 2.6 million people were registered through public assistance offices in 1995-1996, the first two years the law was in effect. But she said registration has dropped precipitously throughout the nation since then, as much as 90% or more in some states.
Lew Daly, senior fellow at Demos, a New York City-based public policy organization and author of God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State, praised the text as "a turning point for the church and particularly for the American church, because our nation and our society is both the epicenter of wealth and the epicenter of inequality.
How widespread is credit card use among college students? How much are they in debt?
Pick your study.
According to a recent report from Student Monitor, a national syndicated market-research survey, 41 percent of college students have credit cards. Of them, 65 percent pay their entire bills every month. The average balance for those who don't is $452.
Employers look to cut costs, workers crave stability following market crash
Last fall's Wall Street meltdown, which erased half the value of some 401(k) retirement plans, has whipped up some of the fiercest crosswinds the plans have faced in their three decades of existence...
There's little agreement, however, on what a new retirement system should look like.
The bottom half of American households now controls less than 5 percent of our total net worth. Our republican founders could not have imagined a distribution of wealth so concentrated, nor a democracy so threatened by the rule of property.
Same Day Voter Registration (also known as Election Day Registration) permits eligible citizens to register and vote on the same day.
This fact sheet outlines some of the advantages of Same Day Registration, particularly its impact on voter turnout and its potential to ensure that every vote is properly counted, as well as a look at why we need Same Day Registration in America's "patchwork quilt of registration processes," and some success stories from states that have successfully utilized Same Day Registration in the 2008 presidential election.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for Americans to achieve and sustain a middle-class life. The costs of homeownership, healthcare and a college education have soared, while incomes have stagnated. According to the Middle Class Security Index, a measure developed by Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, fewer than one third of middle-income families were securely in the middle class in 2006, while a quarter were at high risk of falling out of the middle class.
After being on the outside for years, consumer lobbyists have gained power. Credit card rules were just the start of what they hope to do with it.
One area of regulatory reform that consumer advocates are particularly keen on is a new panel that would regulate mortgages and credit cards. The White House supports the idea of creating a so-called Financial Safety Products Commission, say consumer advocates and legislative aides.
Bob Herbert, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, received an honorary degree and spoke at Lawrence Universitys 2009 commencement.
Bob Herbert, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, received an honorary degree and spoke at Lawrence University's 2009 commencement. Here are his remarks.
It's a great privilege to be here and to be part of this wonderful day with you smiling, gorgeous, beautiful and brilliant graduates.
But the direction of all my work, at bottom, is toward a new family economy, something I believe we can achieve only by fundamentally reformulating American politics around ideas of community wealth and family economic protection. This is a politics that leverages families and communities against market compulsion using the resources and regulatory power of a conservative or "subsidiary" welfare state-one that supports and protects traditional social structures but does not usurp their functions or alter their God-given purposes.
Today's 20-somethings are likely to be the first generation to not be better off than their parents." This is the first line of Economic State of Young America, a report released by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in New York City. And that's a troubling thesis for a generation that grew up being told they can do and be anything.
Yet these reforms still leave the burden of registration on the voter. The holy grail of registration reform remains universal registration. As the Election Protection coalition states in its report on the 2008 election, this would mean a registration system that was automatic, permanent (providing voters an opportunity to update their registration when they changed their name or address, for example), and allows for voters to correct any mistakes on election day.
Today headlines are filled with stories of middle-class families struggling to survive the current downturn. But the problems of middle-class families did not start with the recession.
Between 2000 and 2006, the number of middle-class families that lacked economic security grew from 19 to 23 million. Decline in assets, the rising cost of housing, and more families lacking health insurance depleted middle-class economic resources, leaving millions of families poorly positioned to weather the current recession.