Common retail practices perpetuate racial inequality, fostering occupational segregation, low pay, unstable schedules, and involuntary part-time work that disproportionately harm people of color in the retail workforce.
We’ve allowed the price of college and its attendant debt to rise well beyond the point where it is actually helpful in getting people through college.
(New York, NY)- During the next few weeks thousands of students across the country will graduate from college, an accomplishment that used to symbolize a step toward financial independence and entry into the middle class.
The most important fact about higher education is that only a minority of people go to college. That fact would change if college was affordable for more people.
Popular theories for rising tuition like administrative “bloat” and student aid are at most minor contributors to tuition increases. Here's the real causes.
New Demos Report Shows State Disinvestment in Public Higher Education is Driving Tuition Increases
Decreased State Funding is Responsible for Nearly 80 Percent of the Rise in Public Education Tuition
Recently, there has been much debate about the real cause of tuition increases, which have risen by nearly $3,000 at public four-year universities in the last decade alone. To meet these costs, U.S. students must take on crushing levels of debt just to access education that was readily affordable for previous generations.
Credit checks are one of many barriers faced by Black job seekers; and the implicit biases of employers have proved hard to legislate. That's why New York City just joined other cities and states in banning credit checks.
Demos and coalition partners have reached an agreement with the City Council and de Blasio administration to send a bill banning the use of employment credit checks to the City Council floor. In response, President Heather McGhee issued the following statement:
“We are pleased to see progress made in the fight for equal opportunity employment in New York City. Employment credit checks are a catch-22, preventing qualified workers from getting a job just when they really need one most. The biggest drivers of credit problems are job loss and medical emergencies.
Today, Demos President Heather McGhee joined Mayor De Blasio and other progressive leaders and activists in the unveiling of a new initiative to make income inequality a central issue of the 2016 election cycle.
In the case of for-profits, not only has the government been unable to properly force institutions to account for their behavior, but it has been unable to stop providing the majority of money that keeps these colleges standing in the first place.
Policies like this would incent states to return to an era when college could be funded through a summer job, part-time employment, and maybe modest savings when available, for the largest and most diverse generation of students in our history.
(New York, NY) – Though much research has been devoted to how public policy choices such as increasing the minimum wage can address economic disparities, there has been no systematic analysis of the types of public policies that offer the most potential for reducing the racial wealth gap.
Inequality is growing because the increased wealth of the wealthiest no longer spawns income opportunities for the less well-off households and may actually diminish them.