Press Release: September 25, 2020 The potentially catastrophic, long-term financial impacts of COVID-19 on young adults are highlighted in the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey[1] in Israel, which was administered between June 4 and July 1 by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis in partnership with Mastercard. The survey results found […]
By: Sarah Cowart, communications manager for Social Policy Institute; Pamela Chan, associate director for Social Policy Institute, and Daniel Barker, director of research and knowledge, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth If you attended “Building an Inclusive Economy” on October 7 with the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis (SPI) and Mastercard Center […]
St. Louis Public Radio highlighted survey results from Social Policy Institute’s Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in the U.S. to elevate evidence that child care concerns are driving job losses and the ability to return to work during the pandemic. Atia Thurman, associate director from the Clark-Fox Policy Institute at Washington University added commentary about policy solutions.
S&P Global Ratings, a division of S&P Global, cited Social Policy Institute findings related to COVID-19 and housing hardships in the U.S.
Panet, an Israeli media site, cited SPI research of the long-term effects of the Coronavirus on the economic situation in Israel.
Data and statistics are foundational to policy research and practice. As Social Policy Institute continues to grow, developing opportunities for people to increase knowledge and skills in these areas is a focus of our organization. One example of how we are doing this is a new opportunity led by the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Social Policy Institute: Data and Statistics for Policy Practice.
The University of Colorado Boulder announces SPI’s recent study showing that families with access to Medicaid are able to increase their savings.
13 News, an Israeli news channel, cited a study conducted by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, director of SPI.
Results from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel about ethnic and racial disparities were featured in The Marker, an Israeli news outlet.
Results from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel about ethnic and racial disparities were featured in Israel National News, an Israeli news outlet.
Results from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel about ethnic and racial disparities were featured in Bizzness, an Israeli news outlet.
Results from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel about food insecurity were featured in Jewish Daily News, an Israeli news outlet.
Results from the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel were featured in Ice, an Israeli news outlet.
Davar Today, a newspaper in Israel, interviewed Michal Grinstein-Weiss about the impact of COVID-19 on food insecurity in Israel. The data presented is based on the Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19 Survey in Israel.
Many U.S. households have lost a job and/or income due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These types of losses can influence an individual’s level of life satisfaction and thus, their overall health and well-being. One possible strategy to mitigate the impacts of economic volatility for U.S. individuals and households is to build a rainy-day fund. A […]
By: Olga Kondratjeva, data analyst III, Social Policy Institute; Michal Grinstein-Weiss, director, Social Policy Institute; Talia Schwartz-Tayri, researcher, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; John Gal, professor, The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; senior researcher, the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel; & Stephen Roll, […]
The story below is a translation from an article printed in Hebrew in Israel Today, the largest newspaper in Israel, on Oct. 5, 2020. A new study published here for the first time examined the effect of the first lockdown on households using 2,300 Israelis from June 4 to early July. The data show that […]
This story was written by Tali Heruti-Sover and originally published on Oct. 1, 2020 in The Marker in Israel. According to a study conducted by Prof. Michal Grinstein-Weiss at the beginning of the crisis, young people, generations Y and Z, suffer from high unemployment, have difficulty providing basic needs for themselves and their debts are large
As the United States nears the seventh month of weathering COVID-19’s impact, it has become clear that the economy will not recover simply by encouraging businesses to re-open or consumers to keep shopping. Working adults with children are being disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and will continue to struggle without stronger federal and state support for child care.
Michal Grinstein-Weiss, director, SPI, and Marla Blow, vice president, Center for Inclusive Growth, co-author an op-ed highlighting the need for better workplace policies to mitigate exposure to COVID-19. “By addressing longstanding inequalities that have undervalued essential workers, these measures would ensure that no one is put in a position of choosing health over a paycheck.”
SPI research about job loss is featured in this article on BizNews in which Alan Whiteside, OBE, Chair of Global Health Policy, BSIA, Waterloo, Canada & Professor Emeritus, University of KwaZulu-Natal, looks at the long-term impact of COVID-19.
Some groups may also be better than others at resisting envy. A recent Brookings Institution study showed that African-American and Hispanic people, especially those with low incomes, remained more optimistic than their white counterparts, despite facing physical and economic challenges from the pandemic.
In an interview with NBC 6, Michal Grinstein-Weiss discussed the housing crisis and looming evictions. She said, “We are already in a housing crisis in the U.S. and we were in one long before, and housing is really central for our people to recover from COVID-19.”
The Columbian features SPI data in a story about housing hardship. “Nationally, a survey of low- to moderate-income households, conducted by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, found that individuals are facing increased hardships such as evictions, delayed rent or mortgage payments, or unexpected utility payments and home repairs during the pandemic.”
SPI faculty director, Mat Despard, was interviewed in this Axios story about evictions: “We should be very concerned about what’s going to happen in August and beyond.”
SPI Op-ed featured in the Missouri Times: It’s a no-brainer in a pandemic. A yes vote gives health coverage to well more than 270,000 people, saves rural hospitals from failure, and brings $1.6 billion in federal dollars into Missouri, creating jobs.
When you think of gig work—types of work where online apps and platforms allow workers to get paid for a range of services including ride-sharing, home repairs, art sales, and property rental—you might imagine a flexible job that enables anyone to earn income. If you have a reliable car and a smartphone, you can download […]
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) provides substantial financial support to low-income workers, yet around a quarter of EITC payments are estimated to be erroneous or fraudulent. Beginning in 2017, the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 requires the Internal Revenue Service to spend additional time processing early EITC claims, delaying the issuance of tax refunds. Leveraging unique data, we investigate how delayed tax refunds affected the experience of hardship and unsecured debt among EITC recipients. We find that early filers experienced increased food insecurity relative to later filers after the implementation of the refund delay.
SPI research, published on Brookings Institution: Groundbreaking data from a new large-scale, nationally-representative survey of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households administered by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis in April of 2020 suggests that individuals have been facing increased housing hardship such as evictions, delayed rent or mortgage payments, and unexpected utility payments and home repairs during the pandemic.
The way policymakers and financial capability practitioners communicate about the CARES economic impact payments and other current or future payments may help guide households to use these benefits in the way best suited to their financial situation. This is important because while some households may use the CARES payments to pay down debt and other households may be fortunate enough to be able to save their payments, others will need these payments to simply make ends meet.
Michal Grinstein-Weiss understands how trauma can have a lasting effect. Her father, Slomo Grinstein, survived the Holocaust by spending years hiding in the woods of Poland while his family was killed at concentration camps. “He always struggled a little bit between jobs — and [the Holocaust] doesn’t leave anyone, and he was never able to fully recover from the trauma,” said Grinstein-Weiss, who grew up in Israel and moved to St. Louis in 1999 to pursue a doctorate in social work. Now she’s the director of the Social Policy Institute at Wash U and working to research and develop policy to help black families in north St. Louis who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.
St. Louis on the Air, Sarah Fenske spoke with Washington University’s Dr. Laurie Punch and Michal Grinstein-Weiss, the director of Washington University’s Social Policy Institute and of the Centene Center for Health Transformation. Grinstein-Weiss recently looked into COVID-19 case counts in ZIP codes across the St. Louis region.
Op-ed: Recent infection data from the city of St. Louis confirms it. In a map listing positive coronavirus cases by ZIP code, we see a greater concentration of cases in low-income and highly segregated ZIP codes in the city. Sadly, that data is not surprising.
We don’t need a map to tell us that policymakers, health officials, corporations, and St. Louis residents themselves must continue to break down economic barriers to create partnerships and solutions that support the most vulnerable in our city – those who were already facing a disproportionate social, financial, and health burden prior to COVID-19 entering their lives.
While economic impact payments are different than a tax refund, we can be fairly confident, based on this research, that in this moment of emergency, payments from CARES Act will be used on essential purchases. It is also possible households will allocate their economic impact payments to clear debt entirely or to make a minimum payment in order to keep some liquid assets in checking or savings.
United Way is offering TrueConnect, an employee financial wellness program, through a partnership with the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. It is available to for-profit and nonprofit employers with 100 or more employees.
In today’s tight labor market, employers compete for talent and jobs are plentiful. And workers have choices…
Abstract As the gig economy plays an increasingly important role in the labor market, there is a need to understand the economic factors that influence participation in this sector. In this paper, we investigate how saving the federal tax refund affects gig economy participation for low-income online tax filers in the six months following tax […]
Bufe, S., Roll, S. P., Kondratjeva, O., Hardy, B., & Grinstein-Weiss, M. (2019). Does Savings Affect Participation in the Gig Economy? Evidence from a Tax Refund Field Experiment (SPI Working Paper 19-1). St. Louis, MO: Washington University, Social Policy Institute.
Centene Center for Health Transformation Faculty Director Matthew Kreuter, PhD has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential researchers by Stanford University in a recent study published in PLOS Biology.
Centene Center for Health Transformation Faculty Director Matthew Kreuter, PhD has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential researchers by Stanford University in a recent study published in PLOS Biology.
Financially burdened families’ savings get a shot in the arm with access to Medicaid, according to a new study from CU Boulder, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Washington University in St. Louis and Diego Portales University in Chile.
Tess Thompson, PhD, a faculty researcher at the Centene Center for Health Transformation, has been selected to share her findings during a Poster Session at the American Public Health Association’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo being held Nov. 2 through 6 in Philadelphia, Pa.
On September 24, the Social Policy Institute, a new university-wide initiative dedicated to addressing pressing social issues through empirical research, dissemination of evidence-informed policy, and training in social policy, launched at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Centene Center for Health Transformation™ announces its first published academic research paper based on interviews conducted with parents on how to better engage members in Raising Well, Envolve’s family-centered pediatric obesity intervention program.
University-wide institute to advance the influence of research in innovating policy solutions
Julie O’Brien, PhD will join other esteemed panelists at this year’s Medicaid Health Plans of America (MHPA) Conference to discuss research findings on health and unmet basic needs conducted by the Centene Center for Health Transformation.
Centene Center for Health Transformation faculty researcher Tess Thompson, PhD has been named the recipient of a Mentored Research Scholar Grant in Applied and Clinical Research (MRSG-19-086-01-CPPB) from the American Cancer Society.
Centene Center Faculty Director and behavior economics researcher, Dan Ariely, PhD, MA, recently discussed spending habits and how to feel richer on CNBC.