ProfitWise News and Views

Most Recent Articles

Conclusions from conversations about economic inclusion from the Midwest

Taz George, Susan Longworth and Mark O'Dell

The authors share what they heard about economic inclusion from focus group participants in more than a dozen smaller, Midwestern cities. Key themes were removing barriers to employment; collaborating across organizations and systems; and the importance of representation and power in advancing inclusive policies and practices.

The geography of subprime credit

Taz George, Robin Newberger and Mark O'Dell

Improving the financial lives of the people living in neighborhoods with large concentrations of low credit-scored households requires an understanding of the socioeconomic and financial challenges of those places. In this study, the authors identify such neighborhoods and analyze their socioeconomic and financial attributes, focusing on Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The authors find geographic patterns in the locations of subprime-scored households, in particular that these households are more highly concentrated in urban centers, while suburban areas tend to have very few subprime households. There are also significant differences in neighborhood characteristics in places where subprime-scored households live, including a much higher non-white share of the population, weaker labor market outcomes, lower educational attainment, and higher housing vacancy rates.

Education and the evolution of earnings across population groups since 2000 

Kelley Sarussi and Thomas Walstrum

Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, the country has experienced its longest economic expansion in history, but not every segment of the population has benefited equally. This article explores four commonly used labor market measures to gain insight on the relative fortunes of subgroups of the population – divided by age, sex, race, and educational attainment – since 2000, to learn what has changed in the interim, and for whom.