In September of 2017 the Economic Policy Institute published a study on social class (read: socioeconomic status) and educational success. The report concluded that the “single most significant predictor of educational success” is social class and that performance gaps by social class begin early, creating a situation where a child who starts behind, tends to stay behind throughout their educational career.
Medium
April 15, 2020
African Americans are less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home. According to the Economic Policy Institute, less than one in five black workers is able to do so. African Americans also have the lowest car ownership of all racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., leaving them to use public transportation and exposing them to a greater number of individuals in closed, small spaces. Many black workers do not have paid sick leave or time off. In addition, black Americans are also more likely to live in overcrowded settings, making social distancing or self-isolating recommendations difficult to impossible to follow. Moreover, study after study has shown that black Americans disproportionately lack access to health care when compared to white patients.
Philadelphia Inquirer
April 15, 2020
The Trump administration has failed the American people to an astonishing extent during the current pandemic crisis. Failed to prepare, failed to take the threat seriously, failed to direct resources where they’re needed, and failed to tell the truth. While Congress has provided some aid to state and local governments in relief packages, given the enormous fiscal challenges already underway, it will not go nearly far enough to help offset the health and economic fallout of Covid-19.
Route Fifty
April 15, 2020
For Babayan, who along with her colleagues has called on Washington state to enact a fairer tax code, the data is unsurprising and distressing. Not only does it highlight that the working class is at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus, but so too are many in communities of color. She cites an Economic Policy Institute study showing that fewer than one in five Black workers, and one in six Latinx workers, can work from home. And while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to release the demographics of coronavirus patients, data from Illinois, North Carolina and Milwaukee County show the virus is battering Black communities the hardest.
South Seattle Emerald
April 9, 2020
“During this pandemic crisis, those who have been told they’re self employed, their employer hasn’t been paying into unemployment insurance or workers compensation or providing them with sick leave,” said Lawrence Mishel, a senior labor-market economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank. “They are very vulnerable to losing their job and getting sick.”
April 9, 2020
In general, black Americans face a higher exposure to the disease due to their concentration in urban areas and their jobs in essential industries. The Economic Policy Institute found that only 20 percent of black workers reported being eligible to work from home, compared with about 30 percent of their white counterparts.
April 9, 2020
Sixty-six percent of millennials have nothing saved for retirement (“what retirement?” you might be wondering); homeownership is 8 percentage points lower than it was for previous generations at the same age. For millennials in marginalized groups, it’s even worse, with starker inequities and lower wages. For example, only 16.2 percent of Hispanic workers and 19.7 percent of black Americans are able to work from home during this pandemic, according to a blog post by the Economic Policy Institute. As Annie Lowrey wrote for the Atlantic in 2019, “Millennial suffering won’t just hurt millennials” — it’s a drag on the economy as a whole.
April 9, 2020
Jhacova Williams and Kayla Blado of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post Tuesday that Wisconsin’s elections “highlighted that Americans need more options to vote.”
“One promising method is a vote-by-mail system,” wrote Williams and Blado. “Five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah—already conduct their elections through mail… It’s time for state elections to practice what their own health departments preach: stay home.”
April 9, 2020