Session: Advancing Financial Capability: Community Strategies, Structural Barriers, and Measurement Innovations (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

Overall narrative Promoting financial capacity and asset-building (FCAB) among economically disadvantaged populations is essential to reduce poverty and inequality in the contemporary economy. In the time of job insecurity, limited employer-sponsored fringe benefits, and restricted safety net programs, individuals and families need financial capability (access to beneficial financial products and services and financial literacy) to manage their economic resources prudently, prepare for sudden economic shocks, and invest in their long-term goals (Sherraden, 2013). However, government and other formal institutions rarely offer tangible support to FCAB among the vulnerable populations while promoting mainly middle- or high-income individuals' wealth accumulation through tax incentives (Sherraden et al., 2018). Accordingly, our knowledge about what facilitates FCAB among disadvantaged populations is limited. Five papers in this symposium fill gaps in our current knowledge on how we can promote FCAB among various groups of vulnerable individuals, including immigrant precarious workers in workers'co-operatives, Latine first-generation college students, and refugees in the United States, as well as migrant workers in an urban area in China. This symposium addresses two Social Work Grand Challenges: Reduce extreme economic inequality and Building Financial Capability for All. The first paper, From Financial Exclusion to Collective Stability: Worker Cooperatives and Precarious Immigrant Workers' Financial Capability demonstrates how institutional support from co-ops, labor unions, and NGOs and their collective culture enhances immigrant precarious worker' financial stability by expanding their access to banking services, providing financial education, and enabling them to create collective financial structures (e.g., group savings accounts). The second paper, Enhancing Financial Capability Among Latine First-Generation College Students and their Families through Service-Learning Assignments, shows that integrating FCAB assignments into curricula is a cost-efficient community-based intervention that enhances the financial capability of students and their families. Third, Cultivating Financial Capability: How Refugee Farmers Build Economic Resilience Through Community Agriculture, reports how a community-based farming program (NewRoots), along with its financial education component, improved refugees' financial knowledge and shifted financial planning and spending behaviors. Fourth, Financial Capability and WellBeing among Migrant Workers in Post-COVID China: Evidence from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province highlights the critical roles of financial access and digital financial literacy in enhancing migrant workers' overall, subjective, and objective financial wellbeing. Fifth, Measuring Individual Financial Access: Scale Development and Validation, tests a new comprehensive measure of financial access, a key theoretical concept in FCAB research. The new simplified financial access scale consisting of 11 items provides an essential measurement tool for future FCAB research. Taken together, these papers suggest innovative practice approaches to promote FCAB among disadvantaged populations while offering a new valid measure of financial access. These studies have implications for future financial social work practice, policy, and research.