In the aftermath of the Great Recession, Americans battered by job loss, foreclosure, and plummeting home values tightened their belts and paid down debt. The Latino community, hit particularly hard by the housing crash, was no exception. Yet new research from Demos’ National Survey on Credit Card Debt of Low- and Middle-Income Households finds that even as Latinos are carrying less credit card debt, four in ten Latino households with credit card debt are relying on their cards to pay for basic living expenses.
Connecticut’s investment in higher education has decreased considerably over the past two decades, and its financial aid programs, though still some of the country’s most expansive, fail to reach many students with financial need.
Americans are famously concerned about values and personal morality. The United States ranks among the most religious of all the advanced industrialized democracies, and it has frequently experienced eras of intense moral introspection. The past several decades have been such a period, with heated debates over issues like abortion, drugs, divorce, homosexuality, and prayer in schools. Today, opinion polls show considerable public concern about the moral state of the country.
Discrimination has no place in New York. At our best, we’re a city where people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, and backgrounds have an opportunity to work hard and make their mark. But today in New York, many qualified job seekers are turned away from employment because of their personal credit history.
A number of states have laws demanding citizens produce documentary evidence of citizenship to register to vote. These laws have far-reaching implications for voter participation in our democracy.
In 2010 and 2011, Maryland and New York took bold steps to correct the problem known as prison gerrymandering, a problem resulting from the United States Census Bureau’s practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison cells rather than their home communities.
Introduction In March 2013, acting under a controversial statute that authorized extraordinary action, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to replace the elected government of Detroit. By July, the emergency manager had filed for bankruptcy of the city.
This report presents new research on the scope of federally-supported employment in the private economy and shows how, using our over 1.3 trillion dollars in federal purchasing, the President of the United States can place over twenty million Americans on a pathway to the middle class.
Executive Summary Today, women make up nearly half of America’s workforce, and there is little question that their success in the economy is critical to the nation’s prosperity. Yet every day across America, millions of women go to work in low paying jobs that fail to move their families out of poverty.