Browsing: Upward Mobility

According to a new report, Milwaukee County is a place where economic mobility fell sharply for kids born between 1978 and 1992.

If you’re not married to whomever you hooked up with nine months before your baby was born, you’re very unlikely to be together 15 years later. That makes it a lot harder to pay the bills.

A new study predicting which states are best equipped for social mobility places Wisconsin at 14th. That puts the Badger State behind second-place Minnesota and Iowa (12th place) but ahead of Indiana (21st), Michigan (30th) and Illinois (40th).

For decades, the federal government has assumed a larger role in funding and running safety net programs, leaving states with little ability to address flaws such as employment and marriage disincentives and little power to make changes. State leaders must work to change this.

The Wisconsin Assembly on Thursday voted to ask voters in this spring’s elections whether able-bodied childless adults should have to seek work in order to go on receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, an idea the Badger Institute long has championed.

The Badger Institute’s visiting fellow, Eloise Anderson, explains why men who have been left behind are vital to a new civil society.

The good things in life in this democracy — opportunity, fulfillment, upward mobility, prosperity, the redounding energy and succor that comes from free association, love of relatives and friends

Even before the pandemic, U.S. entitlement spending was on an unsustainable path, the growth in means-tested safety net programs far outstripping inflation.

A frank conversation excerpted from the Badger Institute’s podcast series, Free Exchange 

Pastor Jerome Smith got a second chance and made sure countless others received one too

Parents with disabilities or health limitations often time out of the program or end up on disability insurance

A growing list of states that have adopted universal licensure recognition

Measure creates universal recognition, waives fees for low-income workers, expands opportunity for ex-offenders

Relentless bureaucratic creep undermines competition and hurts consumers

Accepting out-of-state credentials should continue after the crisis ends

Arizona, Pennsylvania paved way for full licensure recognition

The Badger Institute hosted a roundtable discussion on work, poverty and the use of federal safety nets to promote self-reliance.

Public members discuss how they view their role on boards

Wisconsin should join states that have enacted sunrise laws as an alternative to new licenses that fence out workers and don’t protect the public

Angela Rachidi, resident scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Eloise Anderson, former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and a Badger Institute visiting fellow, discuss safety net programs and work in Wisconsin. Rachidi is author of the January 2020 Badger Institute report “Wisconsin’s missing rung: Policies linked to work are critical to lifting people out of poverty.”