Financial Security Program

FSP’s Joanna Smith-Ramani sat down with Steven King, a Partner at Emergent Research, to discuss the results of the second On-demand Workforce survey.

Regulatory innovation is indeed emerging in financial centers around the world as central bankers, prudential regulators, and market conduct authorities rush to make sense of the proliferation of new financial technologies (FinTech) and their transformative potential not just for individual consumers but for the financial system as a whole.

Numerous studies find that millions of Americans are under-saving for retirement, and psychology and behavioral economics have taught us that there are well-understood problems in decision-making that can cause people to not put enough away for retirement and other needs. The question is how to correct these failures and avoid the considerable hardship that can come with not having enough savings.

It’s hard to imagine that there’s a tax credit that can lower a taxpayer’s bill if he or she saves for retirement in a tax-favored retirement account. This may sound to be too good to be true. But it is true. The IRS has a tax credit that pays people to save for retirement.

If this Obama-era retirement regulation is halted, millions of hard-working Americans could lose out on a great opportunity to save for their future.

Unpredictability. Fluctuating hours. On-call work. Lack of input into schedules. Early dismissal without pay. One of the threads that ties together these and other scheduling challenges commonly experienced by low-wage workers is the fact that millions in the U.S. feel profoundly disempowered in the workplace.

This brief synthesizes the current research on scheduling instability, chronicles the most promising responses by the institutions best positioned to act – employers, government, and technology companies – and recommends principles for further reform.

Over three million people lifted themselves out of poverty in 2015. Experts tell us how to make it continue.

What would it take to help individuals and families be financially stable even when their income varies?