Economic Opportunity
Public policy should make it easier, not harder, for folks to get ahead. But Alabama’s long-standing failure to invest adequately in education, job training and other services has limited wage growth for everyday workers and has fueled a growing income gap between our richest and poorest residents. And our state’s tragic, painful history on race relations means those structural barriers often place an even greater burden on black and Hispanic residents. Arise researches the hurdles that stand in the way of shared prosperity and advocates for proven policy solutions to expand economic opportunity for everyone.
Featured Resources
Report
The State of Working Alabama 2006
ACPP has partnered with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to assess the economic condition of Alabama's working families in 2006, against the backdrop of national and historical trends.
Fact Sheet
Getting by: The challenge of measuring poverty
Defining poverty is a difficult task. The researcher who developed the poverty threshold called them a measure of "income inadequacy." That is, they reflect a general agreement about how much is too little to live on, rather than how much is enough. This fact sheet describes how the government measures poverty and offers an alternative measure called the Self-Sufficiency Standard [...]
