

Two years of listening, traveling, and learning led to five interconnected strategies driven by a comprehensive definition of mobility from poverty.
Arthur Brooks and john powell describe the work that will be needed to unite a divided country.
A new brief on coach-navigator models and the role of coach mindset
Looking back on the inclusive process that informed the Partnership’s strategies and idea papers and ahead to the efforts these ideas are already inspiring.
The data revolution is transforming how executives manage operations and businesses deliver goods and services. Yet when it comes to helping people escape poverty, the revolution has barely begun...
The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty’s definition of mobility comprises three core principles: economic success, power and autonomy, and being valued in community. This paper curates and describes selected measures of these three principles.
Narratives are stories we rely on to make sense of the world. In America today, inaccurate narratives about poverty too often get in the way of meaningful change. More accurate narratives about poverty and the true nature of upward mobility will lead to more...
In a forthcoming book, Partnership member Cheryl Hyman puts forward a bold vision for community colleges and what it takes to achieve comprehensive reform.
The NPR program asks, "Who is continuing Martin Luther King's fight against poverty?"
All children should have the opportunity to have healthy childhoods, do well in school, and succeed as adults. One effective tool for helping children in poverty succeed is the federal child tax credit (CTC), which provides many working parents an annual tax credit...
To achieve mobility from poverty, young people must have resources to develop their identities and avoid unintended pregnancy. We propose expanding programs that help young people find their “why” —their personal reasons for making thoughtful decisions during...
Child support is a vital tool for providing income to children living in poverty. For families living in poverty who receive child support, it makes up 41 percent of their income on average. But the system can be punitive, requiring noncustodial parents—typically...
We can use emerging scientific findings on the ways poverty affects behavior and decisionmaking to help people living in poverty achieve dramatic gains in mobility. We can revolutionize human services delivery by moving away from strategies that seek modest gains...
What might justice look like if the people most affected by crime and poverty had a much greater say in what safety means to them and how their government delivers it?
Having access to a mainstream bank account, credit, and other financial services is vital to upward mobility. Safe, affordable financial services facilitate saving, homeownership, and small business ownership, and thus financial stability. That stability gives people room to plan for the future...
The ability to afford a decent stable home is a primary concern for families seeking to achieve mobility from poverty. This memo describes the scope of the housing affordability crisis, the market challenges that impede affordability, current policy responses, and options for improving...
The effects of poverty in early childhood can last a lifetime. Home visiting programs can help. In home visiting programs, a nurse or other specialist offers parents support and coaching in their homes and connects them to other needed services. Evidence shows that...
The United States is facing a massive shortage of affordable rental housing with worrying effects on millions of children. Rental vouchers can help. ...
Every family should be able to live in a neighborhood that supports well-being and boosts children’s chances to thrive and succeed. Yet today too many low-income families and families of color live in neighborhoods that lack resources and instead amplify the effects of growing up poor.
We...
Community colleges can be a springboard to a better life. They serve underrepresented, low-income, and nontraditional students; have a wide range of practical offerings; and offer lower tuition. They are uniquely situated to change the economic trajectory of...
New technologies and alternative work arrangements are transforming the American labor market. Can the country leverage the ingenuity that created the dynamic 21st-century workplace to improve pathways to upward mobility? We identify six ideas that can improve the...
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and staffed and supported by the Urban Institute, the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty was tasked with answering one big, bold question: What Would It Take to Dramatically Increase Mobility from Poverty? Specifically, the Partnership was...
Beginning with the landmark Gautreaux housing desegregation lawsuit, local programs have used federally funded housing vouchers to help low-income families move from neighborhoods of poverty and distress to neighborhoods that offer greater opportunity. The latest evidence finds that such “moves...
Beginning with the settlement houses of the late 19th century, practitioners and policymakers have worked to tackle the challenges of poverty in place through an evolving set of strategies. Since then, federal, state, and local governments; philanthropy; charitable organizations; and research...
One of the city's high schools now houses a student-run credit union branch.
Why ending the stigma of poverty should be a bipartisan issue
The new documentary The Force takes viewers inside the Oakland Police Department, an institution Partnership member Jennifer Eberhardt knows well after two years of intensive research.
Juan Salgado on expanding access to post-secondary education
Raj Chetty's work leads to new insights
Kathryn Edin interviews the authors of The Financial Diaries
The definition of mobility from poverty that we have decided to put forth includes these three core principles: economic success, power and autonomy, and being valued in community.
A first-of-its-kind study co-authored by Partnership member Jennifer Eberhardt quantifies racial bias in police traffic stops.
Can our collective pain push our common intersests to the forefront?
Why slavery still exists in America
Leveraging insights from brain science
Partnership member and Woodrow Wilson School dean Cecilia Rouse talks about education, human flourishing, and why economics is about more than the things we typically measure.
How Partnership member and California Endowment senior vice president Anthony Iton illustrates the salience of place.
Predictors of persistently poor children's economic success.
The Partnership traveled to the neighborhood where Cesar Chavez got his start, to learn with residents about the changing dynamics of an immigrant community with historically high economic mobility.
Invisible workers in one of the country’s wealthiest regions.
The Partnership's Kathryn Edin on two big trends affecting low-income families.
The Partnership hosted a series of design labs to help translate our big ideas into concrete proposals.
As popular online platforms grow, facilitating more communication between strangers, they have been at the center of conversations about racial bias.
Members of the Mobility Partnership discussed the ideas the Partnership is developing at the Robin Hood and Russell Sage Foundations' Poverty Solutions Conference.
As technology advances, employers demand different skills, and the cost of a four-year degree rises, community colleges are a crucial gateway to postsecondary credentials.
Kathryn Edin headed a research effort investigating factors that led to protests and violence after the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. In this interview, she talks about how far Baltimore has come since then and what still needs to change.
New York City’s falling crime rate has been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in arrests and other police enforcement activities.
In North Philadelphia, Reverend Luis Cortés Jr. is building an organization that is responsive to the needs of local residents and takes pride in ethnic heritage. He wants to make it a national model.
The Star Tribune uses data and the life trajectories of three Minnesotans to illustrate income mobility in the Midwest.
Webinar: Conversations from Thought Leaders on Economic Mobility: Reflections and Insights on Recent Research and Ideas
Mobility Partnership member Raj Chetty is being credited with quantifying the state of the American Dream: it is not nearly as robust as it used to be.
Modern manufacturing as a pathway out of poverty.
At a time when our country feels so divided, I am called to reflect on what unites us.
The Mobility Partnership traveled to the Mississippi Delta to learn with residents and leaders in the region.
Mobility Partnership member Bill Bynum on regional inequalities and the needs of rural communities.
Mobility Partnership member and City Colleges of Chicago chancellor Cheryl Hyman spoke at the Atlantic’s Future of Work summit.
The New York Times’ Eduardo Porter highlights a proposal for a universal monthly child allowance.
Mobility Partnership member Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Dalai Lama collaborated on an...
To reduce child poverty and income instability, improve child development, and eliminate extreme poverty among US families with children, this webinar focuses on a proposal by nine leading poverty scholars on converting the Child Tax Credit and child tax exemption into a universal monthly child...
Emerging research from many diverse fields, such as genetics, behavioral economics, cognitive neuroscience, medicine, and more, has converged to create a common Brain Science Lens.
The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society recently released its first annual Inclusiveness Index.
Last week, California Highway Patrol (CHP) personnel underwent an implicit bias training co-designed by US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty member Jennifer Eberhardt.
“On the Media” launched a series designed to correct popular misconceptions about poverty.
Racial bias creates the ideal conditions for financial exploitation.
While reporting on the 3.5 million people who moved above the poverty line in 2015, the New York Times noted some of the numerous services people working to escape poverty might need.
One of the most interesting conversations taking place within the Mobility Partnership is about the nature and definition of poverty.
Seeing great community organizers at work changed the way I think about health.
With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Urban Institute is supporting the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty. Chaired by David Ellwood and consisting of 24 leading voices on these issues, the Partnership is a new collaborative aimed at discovering permanent ladders of...
The first meeting of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty was May 12 and 13 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York.
A black child who grew up in poverty in the late 1960s was twice as likely as a white child who grew up in poverty to also be poor as an adult.
Substantially increasing mobility from poverty means different things to different people. Some goals for reducing poverty and increasing mobility may sound ambitious but fall well within historical experience, while others may require levels of economic growth or redistribution that are beyond...
Experts in the Partnership gathered for the first time last month in Bedford-Stuyvesant to reframe how society thinks and talks about people experiencing poverty.
After leading public- and private-sector efforts to create economic opportunities for children and families, Nisha Patel is now executive director of a national initiative to combat poverty.
WASHINGTON, DC, February 5, 2016 — Today, the Urban Institute announced a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, a new collaborative aimed at discovering permanent ladders of mobility for the...
Today, the Urban Institute is launching a collaborative of extraordinary partners with an audacious ambition: building stronger and more effective ladders of economic and social mobility out of poverty.
This independent effort, the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty...
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and staffed and supported by the Urban Institute, the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty was tasked with answering one big, bold question: What Would It Take to Dramatically Increase Mobility from Poverty? Specifically, the Partnership was...
Predictors of persistently poor children's economic success.