The Opportunity and Ownership project conducts policy research on assets, ownership, and opportunity for low- and middle-income families, as well as for disadvantaged populations. Our work looks beyond traditional antipoverty programs and explores ways to encourage self-sufficiency. Owning assets such as savings, homes, pensions, and small businesses can strengthen a family’s safety net, sustain seniors in retirement, and give low-income Americans a foothold in the middle class.
Policy Impact
Our expert team informs, analyzes, and evaluates asset-building policies and programs. O&O researchers at the Urban Institute have worked closely with the U.S. departments of the Treasury, of Health and Human Services, of Housing and Urban Development, and of Agriculture. We advised the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about setting up its research division and our proposals formed a major part of the bureau’s strategic plan.
We give decisionmakers innovative policy recommendations and have put asset-building priorities on the national agenda by showing how to:
- redesign child saving accounts to better distribute their benefits,
- enable families to weather emergencies and develop through small loans and matched savings accounts,
- draw attention to housing and pensions as major components of saving for most households,
- convert housing rental vouchers into homeownership vouchers,
- target more efficiently and equitably the over $400 billion worth of subsidies for saving,
- modify housing tax subsidies to better serve low- and moderate-income families,
- improve home mortgage closing-cost disclosures,
- reform the pension system to expand the retirement savings of low- and moderate-income workers,
- and make minimum benefits and other supports a key piece of Social Security reform.
Research Leaders
Our work is leading the way in the growing asset development field. We help bring experts together through a new asset-building track at the annual Association for Public Policy and Management meetings. We published the most comprehensive book evaluating what’s known about asset building for the poor, Asset Building and Low-Income Families. And we work closely with other organizations engaged in asset development.
Latest Research
