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Being Poor Above the Poverty Line

by Julie Siwicki of the Financial Access Initiative •

What does it mean to live between poverty and the middle class? In a multi-media report released last week, Al Jazeera America digs into the lives of 5 Californian families that "earn too much to receive most government benefits yet too little to reliably make ends meet."

The piece profiles families with income below the self-sufficiency standard, a measure developed by the University of Washington in the 1990s. The self-sufficiency standard . . . 

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Bad Data

by Thea Garon of the Financial Access Initiative •

At FAI, we’re big advocates for data. Why? Because you can’t make good policy without data. Data can be collected in many ways and come in many forms: transaction records, panel surveys, financial diaries, or field experiment results.  We get excited about the opportunity to collect or analyze data about the financial behavior of poor households...

 

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