The Economic Policy Institute nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank this month published a series of telling charts that “paint a picture of increasingly inadequate retirement savings for successive generations of Americans — and large disparities by income, race, ethnicity, education, and marital status.”
MarketWatch
January 8, 2020
Startling new data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reveals that an uncomfortably large number of Americans are lacking in retirement savings. Among households headed by someone between the ages of 32 and 61, nearly half have no money in retirement savings whatsoever. This consequences of this issue are just starting to reach the surface of our community and are indicative of why we are seeing a growing homeless senior population. This telling similarity among homeless seniors reveals that many were engaged in low wage work and were not able to invest in supplemental income retirement accounts, or to plan for their future, due to the growing high cost of living. They were left with very little opportunity to save and invest. As a result, many homeless seniors are victims of having stagnant Social Security income that provides less than what’s needed to cover basic needs and a system that discards them once their ability to supply labor is exhausted. I know we can do better to create a system where we care for our elders, ensure dignity in aging and provide access to support services that fill in the gap when government fails. I believe we have done a great deal of that work here in Santa Cruz County through the partnerships among senior service providers such as Grey Bears, Meals on Wheels, Senior Network Services, Elderday and Lift Line under the collaboration of our own Area Agency on Aging.
Santa Cruz Sentinel
January 8, 2020
You’re more likely to come out ahead if you compare your savings to the average for all working-age families. Their median nest egg was a paltry $5,000 as of 2013, the latest year for which the Economic Policy Institute has data. That’s because many working-age families had little or zero savings.
Investor's Business Daily
January 8, 2020
Earlier this year, I spent a long weekend in Jackson, Wyoming, the most economically unequal place in the US, according to a 2018 report published by the Economic Policy Institute. In the Western resort town, the average income of the richest 1% is more than $16.1 million, while the average income of the remaining 99% is $122,447.
Business Insider
January 8, 2020
It’s small wonder there’s a rampant teacher shortage in Illinois and across the nation. Increasing public school enrollments, declining numbers in teacher-education programs, low pay, stress and burnout are creating an environment in which Illinois is short 1,800 teachers now, a gap that experts predict will grow to 20,000 in five years. It could be 10 times that nationally, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Education Week
January 8, 2020
Virginia is the 12th wealthiest state in the country, but Virginia public school teachers make $8,483 less than the national average, ranking Virginia 32nd in teacher pay in the nation, according to the National Education Association. Comparing Virginia teachers’ earnings with their professional peers, the situation is even bleaker. A report by the Economic Policy Institute, a DC-based think tank, found that in recent years Virginia teachers’ pay “has fallen 31 percent lower than the wages of other college-educated workers” in the state. The report noted that Virginia teachers rank the third-worst in the nation in salary match-ups with similarly educated non-teaching professionals. In addition, a 2018 report by the Education Law Center at Rutgers University ranked Virginia 49th in teacher wage competitiveness out of 51 states and the District of Columbia.
Blue Virginia
January 8, 2020
Teachers’ salaries have never been competitive with other professions, but now we have evidence of a continued decline over the past 20 years. The Economic Policy Institute has documented the salary decline compared with other college graduates:
St. Louis Post Dispatch
January 8, 2020
Indeed, the source of the “teacher pay gap” statistic is an annual report by the energetically progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI). To determine that teachers are paid 21.4 percent less than their peers, the EPI report compares income with years of education and basic demographic information (such as age and marital status), and then attributing any salary differentials to the profession. Yet, as noted above, applying the same methodology to other professions yields some pretty bizarre results. Using the EPI model, for instance, analysts Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine calculate that nurses are “overpaid” by 29 percent, firefighters by 25 percent, and aerospace engineers by 38 percent — while telemarketers are “underpaid” by 26 percent.
The Hill
January 8, 2020
As Hunter Blair of the Economic Policy Institute noted on the two-year anniversary of the passage of Trump’s tax cuts last week, “the $4,000 annual boost to average incomes that the White House Council of Economic Advisers promised to working families because of the [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] did not—and will not—happen.”
Common Dreams
January 8, 2020
This was up significantly from just a couple of years earlier. During the 2015-16 school year, for example, teachers spent an average of $460 each on classroom supplies, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis. Teachers in several states, including Arizona, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Rhode Island, as well as Washington, D.C., spent more than $500 each that year.
Washington Examiner
January 8, 2020