Economic Justice

This is the 2009 State of Opportunity report.  Here you may download the final report, the final report with accompanying charts, a synopsis, and each of the indicators individually.

Read more about the report here.

This toolkit represents the best thinking about how to use the Opportunity Frame from the communications professionals at the SPIN Project, the leaders of The Opportunity Agenda, other communications professionals engaged in defining the Opportunity Frame, and grassroots leaders from across the country working on critically important issues. 

This memo offers guidance for using the 2009 State of Opportunity in America report, which examines various dimensions of opportunity, including health care, wealth and income, education, and incarceration. While expanding opportunity in America remains a goal of policymakers and advocates alike, this report finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality. Our recommendations to address this reality offer concrete ideas for moving us forward together.

This memo sets forth themes and ideas on talking about immigration during the current economic downturn.

These talking points offer communications advice to policymakers, scholars, advocates and others seeking to promote immigrant integration policies at the state or local level. 

Alan Jenkins, executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, appears on MSNBC to discuss the economy and our new report, The State of Opportunity in America.

This is the 2007 update to the State of Opportunity report.  There are two files, the full chart of indicators and a summary.

If the promise of opportunity is a core national commitment, it is essential to measure our success in fulfilling that commitment.  This report assesses the nation’s progress toward protecting and expanding opportunity for all Americans and encourages our policymakers, through bold leadership and innovative policies, to ensure the promise of o

On February 17, 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law, launching an unprecedented public investment in economic recovery—$787 billion. Clearly, an investment of this size should reflect and promote our shared American belief in equality.

In her blog today, Arianna Huffington asks if CBS’s new reality offering, Undercover Boss, is the most subversive show on television. It’s a provocative question, as most of us would like to think that a reality show existed that could turn the genre on its head.

While it is a deeply-held American belief that we’re all in this together, there has long been a truism that when the economy gets a cold, the poor get pneumonia. It’s a glib way of noting that any downturn in the economy has a disparate impact on those least prepared to handle it.

With an African-American President leading our country, do we still need to think about and create solutions for historic barriers to opportunity? The answer? Absolutely.

President Obama faced a remarkable political challenge in his recent State of the Union.  Beset on all sides—by populists on the left and right who are highly suspicious of him and all of institutional Washington, by an economy that can produce GDP growth but not jobs, by an increasing consensus that he has failed to connect his legislative priorities to core values since the election—he succeeded in, if nothing else, reminding us of the energy and passion that helped him build a network of committed volunteers, grassroots campaign staff, and small dollar donors.  In the speech he offered a litany of new financial policy prescriptions, including one—rolling $30 billion of TARP funds that big banks have already repaid into smaller, local banks—that has not garnered many headlines, but which represents an affirmation of the critical role that our communities play in our economic vibrancy.  

Although official unemployment in New York City is 10.1 percent, a closer look reveals an underlying complexity to the story. Rates of unemployment vary greatly across the city.

The University of California's Regents recently announced plans to raise undergraduate fees, the functional equivalent of tuition, an eye-popping 32% for the upcoming school year.  While desperate times do call for desperate measures—and these are indeed desperate times for California’s budget—erecting economic obstacles to educational achievement will only hurt the state in the long-run.  California became a leader in high-tech industries like software and semi-conductors by fostering the type of innovation that only comes from providing economic opportunity for all, and it can doom itself to long-term economic obsolescence by making higher education a luxury good.

The economic stimulus package has tackled some of the most pressing job-related issues facing our communities.  However, with national unemployment at over 10% for the first time since the early 1980s, we have to make sure recovery monies are spent in communities who need help the most. We have a better chance of achieving success in these areas if we come together to ensure that our most vulnerable communities, including communities of color, immigrants, and the poor, can participate in and contribute to our economic growth.

with Jill Mizell

Americans are still pessimistic about employment and the economy, according to several recent polls. A majority agree that young people will not achieve the same standard of living as the previous generation or that it is more likely that families will suffer “economic reversals” in the next 5 to 10 years. Support for the stimulus bill has dropped and opinion is now deadlocked on the bill, though some aspects, such as spending on infrastructure and public works, remain popular among a majority. A majority of Americans think that some of the recent federal measures should be lasting, while fewer Americans – although still a majority – feel that President Obama's policies will help in these tough economic times.

 As the American economy claws its way back from the edge of a cliff, Michigan serves as a powerful example of just how bad things are in some places, and, indeed, how bad they could get for the rest of the country.  The state continues to have the highest unemployment of any state, and, while the auto bailouts appear to have prevented the wholesale collapse of the industry, there is no question that American automakers will cease to exist if they do not thoroughly reform themselves, which would send the state’s unemployment rate still higher.   And yet, in Flint, a city at the center of the storm, where more than a third of residents live in poverty, citizens refuse to give up on their community.

As Obama’s first 100 days draw to a close, new research shows that addressing today’s economic crisis will require reinvesting in a bedrock American principle: Opportunity. The State of Opportunity, released last week by The Opportunity Agenda, measures our nation’s progress in ensuring that all Americans, and our nation as a whole, have a fair chance to achieve their full potential. The results are sobering.

This week President Obama promoted his much-needed economic recovery package in a prime-time news conference and a trip to economically depressed Elkhart, Indiana, where the unemployment rate has topped 15%. Cities and towns like Elkhart are bellwethers for where the nation as a whole could be headed without swift and bold governmental action.

Every year, I watch the holiday screening of the 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and marvel at how relevant the film remains. That was true in spades this year.