Policies to Promote Financial Inclusion Among Vulnerable Populations: The Role of Social Work Research

Financial inclusion, access to safe financial products and services is critical to bring vulnerable populations into the economic mainstream and a critical component of addressing the Financial Capability for All Grand Challenge. However, many vulnerable populations lack access to safe financial products and services. For example, 25% of low-income families (with an income less than $15,000) are unbanked, and another 25% are underbanked (FDIC, 2016). In terms of asset building opportunities, only 41% of Black families and 26% of Hispanic families owned retirement savings accounts, substantively lower than that of white families (61%) (Morrisey, 2016), reflecting a large and widening racial wealth gap (Shapiro, Meschede, & Osoro, 2013). Whether such access and opportunities are realized is affected largely by state and federal financial services and social welfare policies and regulations. The goal of this roundtable is to identify social work research strategies, methods, and partnerships that may best inform policy development and enactment processes related to economic inclusion of vulnerable populations. To achieve this goal, panelists will briefly describe how their research is intended to inform these policies. Panelists will describe methods used with descriptive, observational, and experimental designs and strategies for disseminating findings to audiences actively engaged in the policy development and enactment enterprise. Speakers will discuss how findings from the following research efforts are informing financial inclusion policies: 1) Refund-To-Savings, a series of online tax-time savings interventions in relation to deferred savings (e.g., Rainy Day Savings Act, S.2797) and advanced payment policy proposals to promote financial security among LMI households. 2) Mapping Financial Opportunity, a project which examines access to mainstream and alternative financial services in the US, in relation to dialogue with stakeholder groups (e.g., FDIC, #BankBlack) interested in financial inclusion. 3) SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK), a statewide randomized experiment of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) to encourage parents to accumulate assets for children, in relation to the development of such policies in multiple states and municipalities. 4) Efforts to expand financial inclusion among individuals and families involved in child welfare and youth correctional systems. 5) Advantages and challenges of cross-national and cross-state approaches to asset policy research. Examples include asset poverty and asset limits in state welfare policies. Roundtable participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and engage with panelists in a facilitated discussion that seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the relative advantages of different research designs in informing the policy development and enactment enterprise? 2. What are the trade-offs in quickly disseminating non-peer reviewed findings to the general public vs. building a peer-reviewed evidence base as strategies to inform policy? 3. How should social work researchers interact and work with different policy stakeholder groups, e.g., legislative staff, legislative committees, think tanks, and advocacy groups? 4. What opportunities are we missing as social work researchers to exert greater impact on the policy development and enactment enterprise?