The benefits of a college diploma are many, including higher pay, lower unemployment, maybe even better health. Yet many high school graduates still do not pursue a college degree. This article examines several key reasons why more people aren’t making this investment in themselves.

(29 Reviews)

Earnings Growth Over a Lifetime: Not What It Used To Be

By Yu-Chien Kong and B. Ravikumar

A typical worker's earnings grow over his lifetime. The generation of workers born in the 1910s experienced more growth than the generation born in the 1940s.

(0 Reviews)

Resources

(0 Reviews)

Why Health Care Matters and the Current Debt Does Not

By Brett W. Fawley and Luciana Juvenal

All of the attention given to raising the debt ceiling this past summer might lead some to believe that spending by the federal government only recently became unsustainable. Hardly. We've been on this path a long time.

(0 Reviews)

Replicating the Harlem Children's Zone: How a Charter School Tax Credit Could Bring Human Capital Investment to Scale

By Ian Galloway

Every year, 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States. A clear moral and policy failure, this ongoing crisis is also an economic disaster.

(49 Reviews)

Resources

(0 Reviews)

Jobless Recoveries: Causes and Consequences

By Natalia A. Kolesnikova and Yang Liu

(0 Reviews)

Spanning the Region

(0 Reviews)

All I Really Need To Know About Microfinance I Learned in Bangladesh

By Daniel Davis

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once called Bangladesh the world’s “basket case.” Unfortunately, the perception that many people still have of this little country consists of one simple idea—it’s one of the poorest countries in the world. But Bangladesh—poised for record growth—is the cradle of modern-day microfinance. Daniel Davis traveled there as a participant in the 17th Biennial International Consortium on Social Development Symposium and discovered a different world, one with some potential solutions for economic development in America.

(118 Reviews)

Resources

(0 Reviews)

Teacher Workshops Chip Away at Economic Illiteracy

By William Bosshardt Paul Grimes, and Mary Suiter,

Workshops put on for teachers by the Atlanta and St. Louis Feds are having the desired results, a recent assessment shows. Teachers are learning about the economy and personal finance, and they are passing this information on to a student body that desperately needs it.

(2 Reviews)

Reader Exchange

(0 Reviews)

An Early Childhood Investment with a High Public Return

By Rob Grunewald and Arthur J. Rolnick

High-quality early childhood programs, particularly for children at risk, result not only in economic gains for the children as they grow up, but in savings on taxes, studies have shown.

(10 Reviews)

Mexico's Oportunidades Program Fails to Make the Grade in NYC

By Brett W. Fawley and Luciana Juvenal

A program that pays poor, rural Mexican families to keep their children in school didn’t translate well to New York City. The latter’s version will end this summer.

(12 Reviews)

From Community College to a Bachelor's Degree and Beyond: How Smooth Is the Road?

By Natalia A. Kolesnikova

Those who start out at a community college and go on to get a four-year or better degree usually face a rougher road than those who start out at a four-year college. The paycheck at the end of the road is often less for those in the former group.

(2 Reviews)

U.S. Income Inequality: It's Not So Bad

By Thomas A. Garrett

Census data show that the income of the rich is growing faster than the income of the poor. But such common measures exaggerate the degree of income inequality. In addition, income inequality is the result of-and not a detriment to-a well-functioning economy.

(6 Reviews)

Income Inequality: Time for Predatory Lending Laws?

By Yuliya Demyanyk

States that have adopted laws against such lending had higher than average levels of income inequality over the past 10 years than did states that didn't pass such laws.

(2 Reviews)

Community Profile: Life Sciences Help College Town of Columbia, Mo., Evolve

By Laura J. Hopper

(1 Reviews)

Wage Gap Widens, Especially in Cities

By Christopher H. Wheeler

Thirty years ago, the "haves" in the St. Louis Fed's District earned 3.7 times what the "have nots" earned. Today, the "haves" make 5.2 times as much. Education is just one of the reasons behind the widening divide.

(0 Reviews)

Community Profile: Pine Bluff, Ark., Unleashes Its Arsenal

By Stephen P. Greene

(1 Reviews)

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