New America Foundation

This issue brief provides recommendations for federal policymakers to engage with the financial services industry to bring millions of un- and underbanked consumers into the financial mainstream. While as many as 22 million American families are “unbanked,” meaning they lack basic checking or savings accounts, millions more are “underbanked,” meaning they may own accounts but still rely on alternative financial service providers, such as check-cashing outlets.

Concern over rising health care costs and the growing number of uninsured Americans has brought the issue of health care reform back onto the front burner. These issues garnered significant attention during the 2004 Presidential campaign, with recent polls showing that the public consistently identifies health care costs and coverage among the most important issues facing this country. While Americans seem to agree that change is desperately needed, no single approach has emerged as the preferred avenue for accomplishing reform.

Last tax season the IRS sent refund checks averaging $2,057 to 100 million tax filers. These cash infusions are often the best chance people have to save some money in any given year. This is particularly true for lower income families. Over 20 million lower income families—one in six taxpayers—received an average $1,700 boost to their refund from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a refundable tax credit designed to reward work.

In recent years, researchers, the media, and policymakers have struggled to examine the shifting dynamics of work and family and to better understand the implications of these changes for American life. Most experts can agree that American families have changed. We no longer fit the June and Ward Cleaver model. In 1960, 70 percent of American families with children had at least one parent home full-time. By 2000, this trend has been completely reversed. Today, nearly 70 percent of families are headed by either two working parents or a single working parent.

Across the industrialized countries, nearly five decades of steady growth in female employment has radically changed life for many parents and children. One of the most striking changes in Europe, Canada, and the United States has been the increase in employment among mothers with very young children. Nearly 85 percent of American mothers employed before childbearing now return to work before their child's first birthday. Rising women's employment -- among both single and coupled women -- is an encouraging trend from the perspective of women’s economic independence.

THE COST OF HEALTH INSURANCE IS SPIRALING OUT OF REACH

The average health insurance premium for a family of four is almost $10,000, which marks the fourth consecutive year of double-digit premium increases. This is roughly equivalent to the amount that a full-time, minimum wage worker would earn over the course of a year.

FROM: Karen Kornbluh
SUBJECT: America's Promise in A New Century
DATE: August 6, 2004

Americans are concerned as they have not been since 1992 about the future of their way of life in a global economy. They sense that their kids may be part of the first generation that does worse than its parents and they don't understand how this can be so when they are "working hard and playing by the rules."

The American health system is rapidly approaching crisis. For those fortunate enough to have health insurance, health care costs are escalating — health insurance premiums rose almost 14 percent in 2003, the biggest increase in over a decade. For the 43 million people who went without health insurance last year, the system has already collapsed.

There is general agreement that traditional mechanisms for managing radio frequency (RF) spectrum are inefficient and in need of significant reform. Many, if not most, of the economists who have considered the issue appear to concur with the view that increased reliance on market forces would enhance efficiency, and support assigning spectrum via transferable, flexible licenses, especially when spectrum is perceived to be scarce.

Father’s Day holds few surprises. A gift from the kids-usually a bad tie-and dinner with the family. Fatherhood itself, however, has undergone dramatic changes over the past few decades as Dads have taken on far more responsibility at home and, in many ways, changed the very definition of Father. The rest of the world has yet to catch up with the new Dad. As a result, even in 2004, too many fathers must still choose between being good breadwinners and good parents -- when they’d like to be both.