Tagged: State of Opportunity

The amount of money you save can have a big impact on your child's life. 

State of Opportunity's Jennifer Guerra recently spoke with Erin Currier, director of the Pew Economic Mobility Project to learn more. According to Currier, a child is more likely to move up the income ladder when his/her parents are able to develop their own assets.

For 20 year-old Monique Norton, 2013 is all about developing her own assets. She's made it her New Year's resolution to save $4,000 by the summer. So far she's saved a little more than half.

Norton wants to use the money to provide a better life for her son, six-month old Jamar. For Norton, this means buying a decent used car and moving out of her mother's subsidized housing complex in Battle Creek.

There's a growing consensus that more needs to be done to prepare children for kindergarten. 

But does preschool really have a significant impact on the lives of children? State of Opportunity's Dustin Dwyer recently sat down with economist James Heckman to find out.

There's a lot of research that shows just how important the first few years of a child's life are to their cognitive development. But for those of us who aren't medical doctors the information can be rather confusing. 

Economic mobility for Americans at the bottom of the income scale seems to be fading. Today more than 40 percent of children born into poverty stay in poverty as adults.

State of Opportunity's Jennifer Guerra profiles one woman trying hard to be on the right side of that statistic.

After months of political rancor and over $2 billion raised, the 2012 presidential race is almost over. Yet with only six days left until Election Day, both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have largely ignored the issue of poverty.

Health insurance is such a political issue, talked about all the time and so dispassionately, that it can be easy to forget just how important it is to some families. But, last year the Census estimated paying for health care pushed at least 10 million Americans into poverty.