There is no distinction to be made between the fight for economic fairness and income equality, and the fight for social justice. The rigging of the economic and political system in favor of a few families of wealth accumulators, the 1%, cannot be understood without understanding that the rigging of the system has a purpose— benefiting a select group of people, privileging them above all others: white heterosexual males.
Any suggestion to ‘move past identity politics’ serves only to maintain and strengthen a political and economic regime based on white heterosexual male dominance. A racist will always say race doesn’t matter in the workplace or lending decisions, a misogynist will say gender plays no role in promotions and compensation, a homophobe will say hiring never involves gender/sexual identity. And they are lying.
The political and economic regime of white heterosexual dominance is exemplified by the Republican party, which is not only an almost exclusively white organization, its policies and platform (specifically those that emerge from the ideology of conservatism) have been explicitly in the service of perpetuating discrimination in every aspect of public life and the economy. The GOP in its current form exists to pursue white heterosexual male dominance. In this regard, the election of Trump should not be viewed as an aberration, but the culmination of decades of deliberate efforts on the part of the GOP, and the fulfillment of the goals and wishes of GOP voters.
Although it might not seem to bear stating— discrimination is of course rooted in bigotry. Discriminatory practices are in the service of bigoted attitudes and beliefs. When a person supports programs and policies that have discriminatory effects, they cannot plausibly claim that they neither overtly espouse or tacitly share the bigotry manifested in the program or policy. I addressed this point in a previous diary:
‘Racism without Racists’: Pretending the election wasn’t about white supremacy won’t help.
How might a white person hide their racist attitudes, even from themselves—that is, to claim that they are ‘not a racist’? By normalizing the reality that is racist, in a way that can be characterized as not racist:
A frame that has not yet been brought to the fore by social scientists is whites’ naturalization of race-related matters. Although the naturalization frame was the least-used frame of color-blind racism by respondents in these two projects, about 50 percent of DAS respondents and college students used it, particularly when discussing school or neighborhood matters, to explain the limited contact between whites and minorities, or to rationalize whites’ preferences for whites as significant others. The word “natural” or the phrase “that’s the way it is” is often interjected to normalize events or actions that could otherwise be interpreted as racially motivated (residential segregation) or racist (preference for whites as friends and partners). But, as social scientists know quite well, few things that happen in the social world are “natural,” particularly things pertaining to racial matters. Segregation as well as racial preferences are produced through social processes and that is the delusion/illusion component of this frame. (pp. 84-5)
Similarly, ‘cultural racism’, embedded stereotypical attitudes that favor whites, and disfavor blacks, help whites interpret a racist reality in a way that allows them to not claim they are also racist:
When cultural racism is used in combination with the “minimization of racism” frame, the results are ideologically deadly. If people of color say they experience discrimination, whites, such as Kara and Kim, do not believe them and claim they use discrimination as an “excuse” to hide the central reason why they are behind whites in society: their presumed “laziness.” (pg. 88)
Nor can anything be achieved by not directly confronting the bigotry that underlies discrimination. In a subsequent diary, I said this:
After fifty years, talking with and trying to understand Trump voters has produced nothing.
These events don’t occur in a vacuum, and rationalizing them as belonging solely to ‘the fringe’ — that is, somehow not contributed to by those who don’t commit hate crimes, but who hold the attitudes aligned with bigotry— excuses every person who contributes to them, whether by their active endorsement of, or passive acquiescence to, the attitudes and beliefs that say racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and homophobia are just ‘different viewpoints’, or even ‘the traditional way of looking at the world’.
If I don’t renounce the ideas, I won’t oppose the actions.
And we need the actions to be opposed, by enough people, if we are to eliminate the harassment, discrimination and hate crimes. These things continue because too many people tolerate them from a safe distance.
The economic disparities in our society are directly the result of discrimination, in myriad forms, and so at their core are an expression of bigotry. If we are to eliminate income inequality, we must attack it at its source: bigotry in all its guises:
Inequality Matters Prudence L. Carter and Sean F. Reardon/ Stanford University
Although we have made some significant progress on racial equality in the last 60 years—in education, health, legal rights, and housing access—much of that advancement stalled in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving us far from racial equality in any particular domain that influences life chances. Economic inequality in the United States, meanwhile, has been growing steadily for nearly 40 years, challenging the idea that America is a land of economic opportunity. Traditional patterns of gender inequality have been eliminated or even reversed in some aspects of education and health, but remain stubbornly persistent in the segmented labor market, wage structures, and politics, for example. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities have attained some semblances of equal protection in some spheres, but they still face enormous bias and invisibility in many others. In short, we still have a long way to go on the questions and practices of social equality.
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The following list of examples of ‘social justice’ issues make it evident that social justice issues are economic justice issues (relevant research on each topic is provided below):
discrimination in hiring and promotion
gender pay gap/racial pay gap
disproportionate allocation of funds to predominantly white schools
maternity penalty/leave policies
hostile workplace/harassment of women, POC, LGBT, religious minorities
discrimination in housing and lending
diversity in executive positions in corporations and universities
funneling by race, residency status and gender to minimum wage and service industries
higher living expenses/higher cost of essentials for people of color in impoverished neighborhoods
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discrimination in hiring and promotion:
Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations, Joan Acker/ Gender and Society
Much of the social and economic inequality in the United States and other industrial countries is created in organizations, in the daily activities of working and organizing the work. Union activists have grounded their demands in this understanding, as have feminist and civil rights reformers. Class analyses, at least since Harry Braverman’s 1974 dissection of Labor and Monopoly Capital have often examined the doing of work, the labor process, to understand how class inequalities are produced and perpetuated (Burawoy 1979). Feminists have looked at the gendering of organizations and organizational practices to comprehend how inequalities between women and men continue in the face of numerous attempts to erase such inequalities (Acker 1990; Collinson and Hearn 1996; Ferguson 1984; Kanter 1977). Scholars working on race inequality have examined the production in work organizations of racial disparities that contribute to society-wide racial discrimination and disadvantage (Brown et al. 2003; Royster 2003).
Race, ethnicity, and the American Labor market: What’s at work? Roberta Spalter-Roth and Terri Ann Lowenthal/ American Sociological Association
Several key economic indicators suggest that not everyone who wants to work can find a satisfactory job (Table 1).White men have the highest labor force participation and employment rates, and the lowest unemployment rates, of all measured demographic groups; data for Asian men differ only slightly.1 A somewhat smaller share of African American men is in the workforce, nearly one-half of whom do not have jobs. The proportion of Hispanic men in the labor force is closer to that of white men than African American men, although a smaller share (compared to white men) is employed. Slightly less than three-fifths of white women are both in the labor force and employed; their unemployment rate is the lowest of all measured groups. A higher proportion of African American women are in the labor force, but the gap is greater between their participation and employment rates, and they are more than twice as likely as white women to be unemployed. The share of Hispanic women in the labor force is lower than, and their employment rate is substantially below, that of white and African American women, although their unemployment rate is lower than that of African American women.
Gender and Racial Bias in Hiring Shelley J. Correll and Stephen Benard / University of Pennsylvania
The profile of American faculty remains largely white and male. In 1999, full‐time faculty were 86% white and 63% male (US Department of Education, 2002). African‐ Americans hold approximately 5% of full‐time faculty positions, almost half of which are in historically black colleges and universities. Hispanics represent approximately 3% of full‐time faculty. Women appear to fare somewhat better, although the percentage of female faculty decreases with academic rank and prestige of university. For example, women make up 44% of faculty at two‐year universities, but only 25% of faculty at research universities. Women hold 45% of assistant, 35% of associate, and 21% of full professor positions.
The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets Devah Pager and Hana Shepherd/ Annual Review of Sociology
Although there have been some remarkable gains in the labor force status of racial minorities, significant disparities remain. African Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as whites (Hispanics are only marginally so), and the wages of both blacks and Hispanics continue to lag well behind those of whites (author’s analysis of Current Population Survey, 2006). A long line of research has examined the degree to which discrimination plays a role in shaping contemporary labor market disparities…
between 2000 and 2002 the Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted an extensive series of audits measuring housing discrimination against blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans, including nearly 5500 paired tests in nearly 30 metropolitan areas [see Turner et al. (2002), Turner & Ross (2003a); see also Hakken (1979), Feins & Bratt (1983), Yinger (1986), Roychoudhury & Goodman (1992, 1996) for additional, single-city audits of housing discrimination]. The study results reveal bias across multiple dimensions, with blacks experiencing consistent adverse treatment in roughly one in five housing searches and Hispanics experiencing consistent adverse treatment in roughly one out of four housing searches (both rental and sales).3 Measured discrimination took the form of less information offered about units, fewer opportunities to view units, and, in the case of home buyers, less assistance with financing and steering into less wealthy communities and neighborhoods with a higher proportion of minority residents...
competition and deregulation of the banking industry have led to greater variability in conditions of loans, prompting the label of the “new inequality” in lending (Williams et al. 2005, Holloway 1998). Rather than focusing on rejection rates, these researchers focus on the terms and conditions of loans, in particular whether a loan is favorable or subprime (Williams et al. 2005, Apgar & Calder 2005, Squires 2003). Immergluck & Wiles (1999) have called this the “dual-mortgage market” in which prime lending is given to higher income and white areas, while subprime and predatory lending is concentrated in lower-income and minority communities (see also Dymski 2006, pp. 232– 36). Williams et al. (2005), examining changes between 1993 and 2000, find rapid gains in loans to under-served markets from specialized lenders: 78% of the increase in lending to minority neighborhoods was from subprime lenders, and 72% of the increase in refinance lending to blacks was from subprime lenders. Further, the authors find that “even at the highest income level, blacks are almost three times as likely to get their loans from a subprime lender as are others”
gender pay gap/racial pay gap
Race and Gender in the Labor Market Joseph G. Altonji and Rebecca M. Blank/ Handbook of Labor Economics
Race and gender differentials in the labor market remain stubbornly persistent. Although the black/white wage gap appeared to be converging rapidly during the 1960s and early 1970s, black/white male wages have now stagnated for almost two decades. The black/ white female wage gap has actually risen over the past 15 years. The Hispanic/white wage gap has risen among both males and females in recent years. In contrast, the gender wage gap showed no change in the 1960s and 1970s. Not until the late 1970s did it begin to converge steadily (although a significant gender gap still exists). Of course, these wage gaps are only the most visible form of differences in labor market outcomes by race and gender. Substantial differences in labor force participation, unemployment rates, occupational location, non-wage compensation, job characteristics and job mobility all exist by both race and sex...
Full compensation involves more than wages; indeed, non-wage benefits currently compose about one-third of total compensation. The male/female difference in wages is also visible in fringe benefits. Vella (1993) indicates that using the wage rather than a measure of full compensation to indicate the price of labor can result in incorrect estimates of labor supply elasticities. As with wages, some of the male/female difference in nonwage compensation relates to the human capital and productivity differences between workers of different genders, some of it relates to differences in the characteristics of jobs held by men and women, and some of it remains unexplained.
diversity in executive positions in corporations and universities
Barriers and Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership The American Association of University Women
Women are much less likely than men to be considered leaders. In 2015, only 5 percent of the companies in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index had female chief executive officers (Catalyst, 2015a). Of course, the leadership gap is not confined to business. In the nonprofit sector, women are more likely to be in leadership positions, but they remain underrepresented. For example, in a 2015 Massachusetts study, only 21 out of 151 nonprofit organizations had boards with at least 50 percent women (Boston Club, 2015). Meanwhile, women make up only one in five members of the U.S. Congress, and just six states (New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and South Carolina) currently have female governors (Center for American Women and Politics, 2016a). But the leadership gap is not confined to business and politics; unions (Bryant-Anderson & Roby, 2012), religious institutions (Christ, 2014), the legal profession (Rikleen, 2015), academia (American Council on Education, 2012), and many other institutions also exhibit this gap. For Asian, black, and Hispanic women, the problem is even more acute. Fewer than 3 percent of board directors at Fortune 500 companies are women from these groups (Catalyst, 2015b). This disparity is also found at the staff level. Asian, black, and Hispanic women make up 17 percent of workers in S&P 500 companies but fewer than 4 percent of executive officials and managers (Catalyst, 2014).
Gender, Race, and Leadership Robert W. Livingston/ Harvard University
the numerical representation of disadvantaged groups differs greatly as a function of organizational hierarchy. Specifically, there is a high representation of women and minorities in lower ranks within organizations, and there is even a respectable representation of women and minorities in middle management. For example, a recent survey by Catalyst estimated that nearly 40% of middle management positions are occupied by women. At upper levels of management, this representation plummets dramatically. For example, roughly 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women (and this is the highest percentage in history). Fewer than 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are members of ethnic minority groups. These figures are similar when one examines the representation of women and minorities in top positions in governments, as well as industry, and when examining representation cross-nationally. In short, the traditional or prototypical leader in Western society is both White and male (Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips, 2008), and the numbers are consistent with these cognitive assumptions of what a leader is and what a leader should be
disproportionate allocation of funds to predominantly white schools
Unequal opportunity: Race and Education Linda Darling-Hammond/ Brookings Institution
Americans often forget that as late as the 1960s most African-American, Latino, and Native American students were educated in wholly segregated schools funded at rates many times lower than those serving whites and were excluded from many higher education institutions entirely. The end of legal segregation followed by efforts to equalize spending since 1970 has made a substantial difference for student achievement. On every major national test, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gap in minority and white students’ test scores narrowed substantially between 1970 and 1990, especially for elementary school students. On the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the scores of African-American students climbed 54 points between 1976 and 1994, while those of white students remained stable.
Even so, educational experiences for minority students have continued to be substantially separate and unequal. Two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority, most of them located in central cities and funded well below those in neighboring suburban districts. Recent analyses of data prepared for school finance cases in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, and Texas have found that on every tangible measure—from qualified teachers to curriculum offerings—schools serving greater numbers of students of color had significantly fewer resources than schools serving mostly white students.
maternity penalty/leave policies
Do Maternity Leave Policies Hurt Mothers? Christy Glass/ Gender and Society
sociologists estimate that mothers pay significant wage penalties even after controlling for work experience and job characteristics (here). However, blaming paid leave policies—or, worse, blaming women for taking advantage of such policies—misses an important part of the story and risks holding mothers responsible for the discrimination they face in the workplace.
Important work by sociologists suggests that motherhood penalties result from the conflict between who employers want workers to be—hard working, productive and totally committed to work—and who they believe mothers are—committed to children and family above all (here). Because employers view mothers as less devoted to work than non-mothers, they tend to discriminate against them in recruitment, hiring and promotion (here).
But are paid leave policies to blame for this discrimination? Is the answer to eliminate such leaves, thereby eliminating a source of employers’ lack of confidence in mothers’ abilities.
Social science says no.
hostile workplace/harassment of women, POC, LGBT, religious minorities
Paying an Unfair Price: The Financial Penalty for LGBT People of Color in America Center for American Progress
LGBT workers of color experience high rates of discrimination both because they are LGBT and because of their race and ethnicity. For example, surveys of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) LGBT people uncovered shockingly high rates of sexual orientation discrimination; between 75% and 82% of API LGBT people said they had been discriminated against at work because of their sexual orientation.17 Surveys of black LGBT people indicate that four in 10 (42%) have experienced employment discrimination based on their race, sexual orientation, and/ or gender identity.18 Transgender workers of color report higher rates of job loss and employment discrimination compared to white transgender workers (see Figures 5 and 6 on the next page).19 LGBT immigrants can be particularly vulnerable; for example, they may be exploited due to lack of immigration status, lack access to programs and services because of limited English proficiency, or being discriminated against because they are immigrants and/ or because of having limited English proficiency.20
Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace Chai R. Feldblum and Victoria A. Lipnic/ EEOC
During the course of fiscal year 2015, EEOC received approximately 28,000 charges alleging harassment from employees working for private employers or state and local government employers.[8]This is almost a full third of the approximately 90,000 charges of employment discrimination that EEOC received that year. Many of the charges alleged other forms of discrimination as well, but harassment constituted either all of, or part of, the alleged discrimination in these charges. During that same year, federal employees filed 6,741 complaints alleging harassment as all of, or part of, alleged discrimination.[9] These complaints made up 43% of all complaints filed by federal employees that year.[10]
Of the total number of charges received in FY2015 that alleged harassment from employees working for private employers or for state and local government employers, approximately:
·45% alleged harassment on the basis of sex,
·34% alleged harassment on the basis of race,
·19% alleged harassment on the basis of disability,
·15% alleged harassment on the basis of age,
·13% alleged harassment on the basis of national origin, and
·5% alleged harassment on the basis of religion.[11]
Of the total number of complaints filed in FY2015 by federal employees alleging harassment approximately:
·36% alleged harassment on the basis of race,
·34% alleged harassment on the basis of disability,
·26% alleged harassment on the basis of age,
·12% alleged harassment on the basis of national origin,
·7% alleged harassment on the basis of sex, and
·5% alleged harassment on the basis of religion.
discrimination in housing and lending
Study: Racial Discrimination In Mortgage Lending Continues To Impact African Americans, With A ‘Black’ Name Lowering One’s Credit Score By 71 Points David Love/ Atlanta Black Star
“The effect of being African American on MLO response is roughly equivalent to the effect of having a credit score that is 71 points lower,” the authors wrote. Suddenly, the joke about Black people having bad credit is not so funny, since there are policies and practices afoot by financial institutions to shortchange, disable and disadvantage Black people in the marketplace.
A December 2015 study reported in the Boston Globe revealed that Black and Latino borrowers face significant discrimination in mortgage lending, facing substantially higher rejection rates than whites. The study from Jim Campen, economics professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston, found that 21 percent of blacks in Boston were rejected for a mortgage in 2014, in contrast to a mere 6 percent of white loan applicants. In the rest of Massachusetts, it was more of the same, with 17 percent of blacks being rejected for a mortgage compared to 6 to 7 percent for white applicants, and Latino home buyers facing a rejection rate double that of whites.
Another study found that in Baltimore, where Blacks outnumber whites 2-to-1, banks grant mortgages to twice as many whites as Blacks, showing that banks are cheating people out of mortgages based on race, not income.
A pervasive form of housing discrimination that’s still legal Emily Badger/ Washington Post
… it remains perfectly legal in much of the country for landlords who can't discriminate against blacks or single mothers to discriminate against low-income families with vouchers. Last year, the Texas state legislature even passed a law banning local communities from enacting their own laws making the practice illegal.
Because this kind of discrimination is broadly accepted, the federal government’s largest housing program for the poor doesn’t work like it should. Families with vouchers designed for the private market find much of the private market closed to them. A policy that was supposed to help households leave the concentrated poverty of public housing projects now often steers them instead into concentrated poverty in private apartments and neighborhoods where everyone knows “Section 8 is okay.”
Baltimore County, comprising the inner-ring, majority-white suburbs around predominantly-black Baltimore City, is precisely the kind of place where such a law is needed. The county has never had any public housing. It has a long racially charged history of obstructing fair housing (in 1970, HUD famously withheld sewer funding from Baltimore County over its support for residential segregation).
… concentrating poverty makes it nearly impossible to eliminate. And the policy of doing so is inseparable from race. Throughout the United States, poor blacks live with vastly higher neighborhood poverty levels than do poor whites, because of the long history of private and government discrimination against them.
funneling by race, residency status and gender to minimum wage and service industries
The Political Economy of Low-wage Labor Trish Kahle/ New Deal Progressives
One marked shift in the low-wage workforce is the increasing (re)concentration of Black, Latino, and Asian workers into low-wage jobs. In 1979, more than 75 percent of low-wage workers were white. Today, that percentage has dropped to just over 50 percent, but workers of color, and Latino workers in particular, have been funneled into low-wage jobs. From 1979 to 2013, Latino workers went from approximately 6 percent of the low-wage workforce to 26 percent. Black workers, who have historically been consigned to low-wage labor in the United States, did not see as dramatic a shift. Nonetheless, their presence, alongside a modest increase in the number of Asian workers concentrated in the low-wage workforce, increased slightly, while white presence as a percentage of the low-wage workforce dropped precipitously.(15) Meanwhile, underscoring the connection between low-wage labor and unemployment, Black workers in particular were far more likely than whites to experience unemployment. An estimated 19.6 percent of Black workers—one in five—were unemployed at some point in 2013, nearly two and a half times the unemployment rate for white workers. In other words, while the job market remains difficult for all workers, “the employment situation for African Americans remains at something more akin to depression-level conditions.”(16) These larger-scale processes, alongside other institutionalized forms of racial discrimination (particularly those that intersect with the criminal justice system) have concentrated African Americans in low-wage jobs. Blacks represent 11.2 percent of the employed population sixteen years and older, but they account for 16.4 percent of food servers, 18.5 percent of food preparation workers, and 15.6 percent of dishwashers.(17)
Women are also overrepresented in the low-wage workforce, accounting for 56 percent of minimum wage workers.(18) In certain low-wage occupations, however, the concentration of women is far more dramatic. Women are 89 percent of all home healthcare workers, 71.7 percent of retail cashiers, 87.7 percent of housekeeping staff, 70 percent of food servers, 65.2 percent of fast-food workers, and 92 percent of receptionists.(19) Overrepresentation of women of color in low-wage jobs means that the gender wage gap for women of color is significantly larger than for white women. In 2013, Black and Hispanic women earned sixty-seven cents and sixty-one cents, respectively, to each white man’s dollar, compared to eighty-two cents on the white male dollar for white women.
higher living expenses/higher cost of essentials for people of color in impoverished neighborhoods
The High Cost of Being Poor in the U.S. Coalition on Human Needs
The poor pay more in many different areas of daily living. The Census data show that 59 percent of American households with incomes less than $20,000 a year spend more than half of their income on rent alone.4 On average, low-income households face slightly higher food prices than other households face for the same basket of food,5 forcing them to choose lower quality items to reduce the cost. They get less for what they have to spend, and still end up spending a larger portion of their income on food than higher-income families. The high cost of being poor is a major burden for all living in poverty, but for those in deep poverty – living below half of the federal poverty line – the burden is that much heavier to bear. For a family of four in 2015, the official poverty line was $24,257. According to the Census Bureau, 6.1 percent of Americans – 19.4 million people – live in deep poverty, meaning they earn less than $12,129 for a family of four. Nearly 1 in 11 children (6.5 million) is this deeply poor. That’s down from the previous year, but a higher proportion than in 2007, before the Great Recession. These families are especially prone to late fees for unpaid rent and eventual evictions, leading to frequent moves. Once they do find new housing, they often start out in the hole with a new landlord because they can’t afford the first and last month’s rent along with a security deposit…
Quality, affordable child care is critical for both the economic security of low-income parents, as it allows them to work, and for the development of children. Yet the cost puts quality child care out of reach for many families. The average cost across the country for an infant in a child care center is more than $9,900 a year; for an infant and a 4-year-old, it’s more than $17,800.11 A family at the poverty line with an infant and toddler in child care would therefore have to spend 73 percent of its income on child care, if paying the national average cost. Without a subsidy, low-income families have no choice but to make cheaper and often less reliable arrangements. Medical costs can have devastating effects on already-strapped family budgets. The Census data show that 11.2 million more people would be in poverty if out-of-pocket medical costs were taken into account, showing the importance of quality, affordable health insurance. Medical costs are even more of a burden for the poor in states that have not taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act option to use federal Medicaid dollars to expand health coverage to low-income adults…
With few other options, many low-income Americans are forced to turn to payday loans and similar practices to cover these higher expenses. Unfortunately, this leads to higher costs still. These predatory lenders target low-income Americans and communities of color – nearly half of payday borrowers have a family income of under $30,000. Nearly one in five borrowers relied on Social Security or some other form of government assistance.13 Payday lenders have been shown to be 2.4 times more concentrated in African American and Latino communities. 14 Payday loan companies charge exorbitant interest rates – between 300 and 400 percent, on average, and fees that quickly rack up when borrowers are forced to take out loan after loan just to repay the previous loan. This traps the borrower in a cycle of debt…
Vehicle title borrowers are similar to payday borrowers, but the consequences of failing to pay back a loan can be even more severe. One in five car title loan borrowers who agrees to repay the loan in a lump sum, plus interest and fees, loses his or her car, 17 creating an even larger burden when he or she can’t get to work, to school or to the child care center. Every form of debt gets worse when it’s passed along to collection agencies. In December 2015, 27 percent of consumers in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in the U.S. had debt in collections.18 While the cost of poverty is extremely high for those in poverty, it is also high for our society as a whole. In fact, child poverty alone costs the U.S. economy an estimated $672 billion each year, or 3.8 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). 19 Child poverty results in a less-educated workforce, which reduces productivity and economic output years later. It raises the incidence – and cost – of crime, while also increasing physical and mental health costs.