New Index Highlights Leading Resources for Family Prosperity
October 2, 2019 | Aspen Family Prosperity Innovation Community, Publication
How can we reimagine the supports that families need to thrive in rapidly changing times? Animated by this foundational question, Ascend launched the Aspen Family Prosperity Innovation Community (Family Prosperity) in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Family Prosperity is a groundbreaking initiative that brings together leading thinkers from policy, research, private sector, nonprofit, and community organizations to identify new and different ways to ensure families in America have the opportunities they need to prosper. From employment to economic security to health and well-being, Family Prosperity is developing bold strategies that support and strengthen working families.
The Family Prosperity Innovation Community Index is a collection of resources created by Family Prosperity partners. Since 2017, Family Prosperity has produced a wide range of research and resources to advance learning and action around what it takes to move families, especially those with low incomes, toward economic mobility. The community’s work addresses policy and practice on a wide range of issues, including paid family and medical leave, child care, health insurance and health care, employment benefits, and social safety net programs. This body of work represents the evidence necessary to envision a future of family-supportive policies and practices in America, and the path required to meet it.
The Index is divided into three sections: Research, Tools, and Dialogue. These three areas of innovation are wide-ranging. Policymakers will find leading-edge information about the impact of policy on family prosperity at the local, state, and national levels. Advocates will be equipped with tools and stories that bring to life the urgency of progress on family-supportive policies and practices. And institutional players like employers can reflect on the role of workplace benefits in the success of both business and family.
- Innovation through Research: Eleven original reports use data analysis and qualitative research methods to explore the role of public policy and workplace benefits in the health and well-being of individuals and families as well as business and the economy.
- Innovation through Tools: In this section, trackers, maps, and toolkits provide essential information about existing family-supportive policies and resources across the country, and personal stories paint a picture of those who stand to benefit the most from them.
- Innovation through Dialogue: From webinars to podcasts, debates to “policy labs,” Family Prosperity partners advanced the dialogue around family-supportive policies through a wide range of channels that take information off the shelf and into the world.
Read on to find a summary of each of these valuable assets as well as links to the full resource. The impact of the resources in this library is already being seen, which may be found in the Impact Snapshot call-out boxes throughout the document. And don’t miss the highlights of Family Prosperity’s Innovation through Collaboration, highlighting compelling moments that this community came together to break down silos and advance opportunity for families. After all, it is through connection, collaboration, and community that the necessary innovations for America’s working families can surface and scale.
Related Posts
We are delighted to share a new research report in partnership with Child Trends: Data on Families with Low Incomes Across America Can Inform Two-Generation Approaches. In this new analysis, research experts Elizabeth Wildsmith and Marta Alvira-Hammond paint a detailed picture of how families in households with low incomes in the United States have changed …
Data on Families With Low Incomes Across America Read More »
My heart is filled with love and gratitude for the courageous community of leaders our Ascend at the Aspen Institute team works with everyday. And I am simply delighted to share our Ascend at the Aspen Institute Impact & Inspiration Report. In this magazine-style 2022 Impact & Inspiration Report, you will meet just a few of those inspiring …
Through careful and rigorous research, we know that there is a better way to approach child support policy to build strong families and communities.
As an organization with a vibrant Early Head Start program and a two-generational approach to alleviating poverty, All Our Kin has been a proud partner in Ascend at the Aspen Institute’s Family Prosperity Innovation Community. Being part of this group among 20 partnering organizations has given All Our Kin the opportunity to bring its innovative model …
Mom and Son Duo Reflect on Family Prosperity Convening Read More »
We have an abundance of talent that is ready to reimagine early childhood and well-being in America for our youngest children and families, but we do not have an abundance of leadership experiences that nurture, propel, and position them as the dynamic leaders our country urgently needs. Leadership that reflects the full diversity and genius …
Charting a New Future for Early Childhood Leadership in America Read More »
For many of us with young children at home, the pandemic hasn’t just disrupted our lives — it’s turned them upside down, erasing the boundaries between home and work. We’re seeing more and more stories about parents, especially mothers and specifically mothers in low-wage jobs, struggling to balance being a breadwinner and a caregiver. Only 1 …
Breadwinning and Caregiving Don’t Have to Be Incompatible Read More »
Poverty is the result of poor policy choices. These choices reflect our national values and decide who deserves access to opportunity to achieve their dreams and who does not. This flawed mindset has led to persistent inequities and a hollowing of our shared humanity. Change is possible. The choice is ours.
In an op-ed co-authored by Aisha Nyandoro of Springboard to Opportunities and Trene Hawkins of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Ascend’s Marjorie Sims states the need to honor Black women with bold policies so that future generations can truly thrive. For even as we are achieve historic successes, racist and sexist systems, structures, and narratives persist and prevent our equity and dignity. …
Centering Black women in policy is key to future families’ prosperity Read More »
As we reimagine public systems and services to work better for families, we have an opportunity to do so in a way that honors the full diversity of family structures, as families themselves define them, and builds upon families’ inherent resilience. This requires an intentional and explicit commitment to applying a gender lens inclusive of …
Bringing Fathers Into Focus for Child & Family Well-Being Read More »
A new report released today by Ascend at the Aspen Institute (Ascend) takes stock of the two-generation (2Gen) field. It analyzes what has been accomplished, the lessons learned, and the opportunities ahead with unprecedented federal expenditures in social policy. The report comes at a time when Americans are more fully recognizing that a system that tolerates social, racial, gender, and economic inequities is on unstable ground — and we are reckoning anew with the history of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation that built them into the foundation of our nation.
On Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, Ascend at the Aspen Institute’s Family Prosperity Innovation Community hosted a panel discussion about the recently proposed federal legislation on paid leave. This webinar presented how and why this proposed legislation matters and shared opportunities to advance paid leave locally and nationally. Watch Now https://vimeo.com/557745729 Presenters and Panelists Vicki Shabo …
Ascend at the Aspen Institute and The Jed Foundation Release a New Mental Health Framework with Recommendations for Supporting the Mental Health of Students Who Are Parents Washington, DC – A new study released today by Ascend at the Aspen Institute (Ascend) and The Jed Foundation (JED) finds that more than two in five (43 percent) …
Black History Month is a time for celebration and an intentional moment to pay tribute to generations of Black Americans who have contributed to our society. It is also a time to look inward, asking if the work that we are doing today helps to further advance Black communities, or if it instead stifles. Is what we are doing enough to break through rigid obstacles and nurture an environment that truly gives space for families and individuals to meet their full promise and live their values; and in turn, have communities thrive?
In the last year, families have endured and adapted to myriad unknowns, and too often they’ve had to figure it out without basic support and resources. Yet, as new research conducted by Ascend at the Aspen Institute (Ascend) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) discovered, there is widespread support across political ideologies for solutions that …
Centering Families in Policy Solutions in 2021 and Beyond: What Parents Know Read More »
Earlier this year, Ascend launched the Aspen Family Prosperity Innovation Community, our initiative for breakthrough innovations and collaborations that position families to reach educational success, economic prosperity, health and well-being. As we look toward 2021, opportunities and challenges abound for work-family supportive policies – namely, the future of child care. More than ever, families are …