OCC: Recognizing National Financial Capability Month at Capitol Hill
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recognized National Financial Capability Month by participating in the annual Jump$tart Coalition Financial Literacy Day on Capitol Hill event today. OCC staff distributed materials to assist banks with their financial inclusion activities, including the agency’s Financial Literacy Update. Staff also highlighted the OCC’s HelpWithMyBank.gov website, which…
CDFI Fund: Revised Opportunity Zones Resource Data Now Available
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has released revised information concerning census tracts that are eligible for nomination as Qualified Opportunity Zones (QOZs). Specifically, data in the Opportunity Zones Information Resource has been updated from information provided in a February 8, 2018, release to include all census tracts that meet the New Markets Tax Credit…
HUD: $35 Million Awarded to Promote Jobs, Self-Sufficiency for Public Housing Residents
In an effort to help low-income residents become self-sufficient, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today awarded $34.9 million to public housing authorities, public housing resident associations, Native American tribes, and non-profit organizations across the nation to hire or retain service coordinators to help them find jobs, educational opportunities, and achieve economic…
Federal Reserve: From Income to Consumption Inequality? Looking through the Lens of Motor Vehicle Purchases
Wendy Dunn and Maria D. Tito1 Rising income inequality in the United States over the past several decades has been well documented in the economics literature.2 Recent studies have also looked at the dispersion in consumption, since it more accurately captures disparities in economic well-being. Here, however, the findings are mixed–while some authors find the…
Federal Reserve: New Interactive Data Tools Added to Website for the Financial Accounts of the United States
The Federal Reserve Board on Thursday added three new tools to its web site to provide interactive access to data from the Board’s Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1) release, which tracks the aggregate wealth of U.S. households and other economic sectors. The data visualization tools show, at a glance, the evolution of key…
Federal Reserve: Inequality in 3-D – Income, Consumption and Wealth
Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) Inequality in 3-D: Income, Consumption, and Wealth (PDF) by Jonathan Fisher, David Johnson, Timothy Smeeding, and Jeffrey Thompson Abstract: We do not need to and should not have to choose amongst income, consumption, or wealth as the superior measure of well-being. All three individually and jointly determine well-being. We…
Federal Reserve: Assessing the Severity of Rent Burden on Low-Income Families
Jeff Larrimore, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,1 and Jenny Schuetz, Brookings Institution Housing costs are a severe financial burden to many low-income families. The typical renter in the bottom quintile of the income distribution spends more than half of monthly income on rent and has less than $500 dollars left after paying…
HUD: $75 Million Awarded to Help Low-Income Residents Receive Job Training and Employment
HUD Marks 25 Years of Helping Families Become Self-Sufficiency WASHINGTON – Twenty-five years ago this year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched a program to help households living in assisted housing to become self-sufficient. Today, HUD marked the 25th anniversary of the Family Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS) by awarding $75 million to continue…
Federal Reserve: FEDS Notes | The Unequal Distribution of Economic Education
The Unequal Distribution of Economic Education: A Report on the Race, Ethnicity, and Gender of Economics Majors at US Colleges and Universities Amanda Bayer and David Wilcox Abstract: The distribution of economic education among US college graduates is quite unequal: female and underrepresented minority undergraduates, collectively, major in economics at 0.36 the rate that white,…