Today, there are about 40 million millennial women, representing 31.5% of the female population in the U.S. Millennial women do not benefit from many economic policies and systems designed by, and built to meet the needs of, men as primary breadwinners. Millennial women came of age during the Great Recession, the rise of mass incarceration, unprecedented student debt levels, and changing workforce dynamics. All of these factors contribute to the fact that millennial women are 37% more likely than Generation Xers (those born between 1965 and 1984) to be living below the federal poverty line and are more likely to be underemployed or unemployed than previous generations.
Archives: Resources
Microfinance in The United States
Nonprofit research organization MDRC and Grameen America, Inc., the fastest growing nonprofit microfinance organization in the United States, today released the early results of a research study, Microfinance in the United States: Early Impacts of the Grameen America Program. The study, funded by Robin Hood, is the most rigorous, independent, third-party evaluation of group microfinance in the United States, assessing Grameen America’s program, a microfinance model that provides small loans to low-income women entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to launch or expand small businesses.
Small Business Economic Bulletin March 2019
The Office of Advocacy’s Small Business Economic Bulletin for March 2019 shows gains in the number of employer small firms, owner’s income, and net job creation. The recovery of small business lending remains tentative, even with low loan delinquency rates. The bulletin provides the latest quarterly government statistics on small business income, job creation, startups, and finance. Read the Small Business Economic Bulletin to learn more.
Build Her Up
We at Thumbtack, along with our partner for this report, Square, take pride in our shared mission to make it easier than ever for aspiring entrepreneurs to take the leap and start their own business. And in celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8 and Women’s History Month, we fielded an extensive survey of female small business owners to better understand their experiences of working for themselves.
Shaping Small Business Lending Policy
With limited financial sophistication, entrepreneurial consumers approach the financial marketplace more like retail financial consumers than like business customers. However, an assumption of both legislators and regulators is that business borrowers are more financially savvy than consumer borrowers and thus do not require protections that are as broad reaching. This gap between marketplace policy protections and the lived reality of the vast majority of small business entrepreneurs sets the stage for entrepreneurial consumers to fall through the regulatory cracks, creating the potential for exploitation and abuse. This situation may be exacerbated for minority entrepreneurs, who belong to protected classes that generally are more vulnerable to exploitation in marketplaces, including the small business lending marketplace. This article details the current status of the policy gap relative to minority entrepreneurial consumers and presents a matched-pair mystery shopping study to demonstrate the critical need for reliable, primary data to inform regulatory agencies as they work to implement appropriate protections to ensure equal access to credit across the small business lending marketplace.
Bank Credit to Small Businesses
In February 2019, the Office of Advocacy published a fact sheet titled “Small Business Facts: What Is the Status of Bank Credit to Small Businesses?” written by Victoria Williams, Research Economist. The fact sheet finds that small business lending growth lagged behind large business lending growth from 2016 to 2017. While small banks had higher shares of small business loans relative to their assets than large banks, large banks issued the majority of small business loans overall. Read the fact sheet to learn more.
Food Systems & Development Finance
CDFA is pleased to announce the debut of our first white paper on how traditional development finance tools can be used to demonstrate the viability of the food system as an asset class. Many food-related initiatives, projects, and businesses have lacked sufficient resources and financing for economic and community development, largely because the food system as a whole has not been formally defined as an asset class.
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2019
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: 2018/2019 Global Report Babson College First published February 2019 With its 2018 Adult Population Survey and National Expert Survey, GEM has completed 20 years of entrepreneurship research in economies from a wide range of regions and economic development levels around the world. This 20th-anniversary report profiles 49 economies with respect to demographics, their
Entrepreneurship Pathways for Youth
This new report explores the potential for using entrepreneurship to engage and create pathways for opportunity youth, by examining existing entrepreneurship programs and sharing emerging models for creating and adapting entrepreneurship programming targeted to the specific needs and aspirations of opportunity youth.
2019 Prosperity Now Scorecard
The Prosperity Now Scorecard is a comprehensive resource for data on household financial health, racial economic inequality and policy recommendations to help put everyone in our country on a path to prosperity.