Search Results
Journal Article
CDFIs: What’s in a Name?
The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund in the U.S. Department of the Treasury has certified more than 1,000 organizations as CDFIs in accordance with the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Act of 1994.1 This year, the CDFI Fund will determine which of these CDFIs it will recertify. Although this work is extremely timely, it is also time-consuming.
Discussion Paper
Locally Owned: Do Local Business Ownership and Size Matter for Local Economic Well-being?
The concept of “economic gardening”—supporting locally owned businesses over nonlocally owned businesses and small businesses over large ones—has gained traction as a means of economic development since the 1980s. However, there is no definitive evidence for or against this prolocal business view. Therefore, I am using a rich U.S. county-level data set to obtain a statistical characterization of the relationship between local-based entrepreneurship and county economic performance for the period 2000–2009. I investigate the importance of the size of locally based businesses relative ...
Report
Inequality Within Countries is Falling: Underreporting Robust Estimates of World Poverty, Inequality, and the Global Distribution of Income
Household surveys suffer from persistent and growing underreporting. We propose a novel procedure to adjust reported survey incomes for underreporting by estimating a model of misreporting whose main parameter of interest is the elasticity of regional national accounts income to regional survey income, which is closely related to the elasticity of underreporting with respect to income. We find this elasticity to be substantial but roughly constant over time, implying a large but relatively constant correction to survey-derived inequality estimates. Underreporting of income by the bottom 50 ...
Journal Article
The Reinvestment Fund at 30: Insights and New Directions
Thirty years ago, a small group of community developers, activists, and business people formed a community loan fund in Philadelphia called the Delaware Valley Community Reinvestment Fund. In 1999, the organization was renamed The Reinvestment Fund (TRF). TRF is certified as a community development financial institution (CDFI) by the U.S. Department of the Treasury?s CDFI Fund. Since 1985, TRF has made $1.5 billion in loans and investments and has financed housing, community facilities, supermarkets, commercial real estate, and energy-efficiency projects. The CDFI has been a leader in ...
Journal Article
The Role of Equitable Transit-Oriented Development in Promoting Economic Opportunity
Debate still exists in economics and other fields as to the impact of transit accessibility on finding and maintaining a good-paying job. This article provides an overview of equitable transit-oriented development (TOD), its effects on economic outcomes for low-skilled workers, and a brief discussion of policy solutions for practitioners to consider.
Journal Article
Research Symposium on Fair Housing Explores the Past, Present, and Future of the Fair Housing Act
Even though the Fair Housing Act has resulted in significant strides toward ending discriminatory real estate practices since it was enacted 50 years ago, significant challenges related to fair housing and fair lending still exist, requiring further action by researchers, policymakers, and advocates. This theme underpinned the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Center for Urban Research and Education at Rutgers University?Camden?s recent Research Symposium on Fair Housing, which highlighted the past, present, and future of the Fair Housing Act
Journal Article
Spotlight on Research: Lessons Learned from Pay for Success Programs
Various social problems, such as homelessness and prison recidivism, impose substantial costs on taxpayers. The mounting costs that result from these troubling social concerns at the local, state, and federal levels force officials to seek alternative ways to raise funds to deal with these issues. One such effort is to use a relatively new source of funding called ?pay for success (PFS),? also known as ?social impact bonds,? or ?SIBs.? Currently, there are more than 40 PFS initiatives underway worldwide. A report by Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Sophie Gardiner, and Vidya Putcha discusses what PFS ...
Journal Article
The Fair Housing Potential of Small Area FMRs in the Philadelphia Region
The housing choice voucher (HCV) program, sometimes referred to as Section 8 vouchers, is the largest housing assistance program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), enabling over 2.2 million renter households across the country to access affordable, decent-quality rental units. Unlike project-based subsidies that make dedicated units available at below-market rents, the HCV program allows low-income households to select from units in the private rental market, subsidizing rents such that they do not exceed 30 percent of household income. In theory, the ...
Journal Article
The Future of Fair Housing: Interview with Philip Tegeler
The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is leading efforts to advance federal policy on fair housing and is working ?to promote innovative, research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color.?1 Philip Tegeler, the president and executive director of PRRAC, contributed his insights on the current state of fair housing 50 years after the landmark Fair Housing Act during a recent Philadelphia Fed Research Symposium. Cascade sat down with Tegeler to learn more.
Journal Article
Gentrification: Research and Practitioner Perspectives
In urban areas across the United States, the demand for housing in center-city, amenity-rich neighborhoods is increasing, driven by young, college-educated, predominantly white residents. Those with higher incomes are able to outbid low-income residents, which may lead to voluntary and involuntary displacement of these households. In low-income, center-city neighborhoods, this is particularly troubling, as these neighborhoods offer greater access to public transportation, social services, employment centers, and social networks. Displacement could force vulnerable households into less ...