Data Overview
Family Voices Amplified Data Overview
Executive Summary
“ You have to pick which quality of life you want, but you just can’t have a quality life overall.”
— ANGELA, ATLANTA
Alongside Insight Center and National Black Child Development Institute, Equal Rights Advocates surveyed families in cities nationwide to determine their COVID recovery priorities.
To remain grounded in the needs of these communities, Equal Rights Advocates listened to Black and Latinx families’ experiences with childcare, job and income security, debt, and asset-building in 16 cities across the country through an in-depth survey and regional focus groups. Their voices– as workers, caregivers, and voters, should be at the center of any plan to build back better.
Download the entire data sheet below
Childcare
Black & Latinx Moms Doing It For Themselves: The Cost of Childcare Disruption
“ Childcare is just too much. It’s hard to cover both rent and childcare.”
— ARIELLE, DALTON
Without access to affordable childcare, it will be difficult for Black and Latinx families to return to the workforce stronger than when they left it. Access to childcare is fundamental to achieving milestones of the American Dream: work, education, financial stability, and home ownership. However, our Black and Latina breadwinners delayed these life goals because of increased childcare responsibilities.
Download Childcare Data Here
Debt
We Can’t Breathe: Trying to Survive Dragged Down by Debt
“ I have to start paying my student loans, that’s like a mortgage within itself.”
— CHONDRA, SACRAMENTO
Our Black and Latinx breadwinners live on a razor-thin edge between solvency and insolvency. Debt prevents them from building their savings for financial safety. While only a quarter of Americans tapped savings or borrowed money to stay afloat in the first half of the pandemic, most of our Black and Latinx respondents drew on savings. They also relied on support from their families.
Download Debt Data Here
Generational Wealth
The Math Ain’t Mathin’: The Struggle to Create Wealth in a Pandemic
“ I feel like there is no long term help.”
— ASHLEY, NEW YORK
Historically, the default economic policy of this country has been to block Black and Latinx families from asset building while extracting their labor. Add a global pandemic and the medical debt and employment disruptions accompanying it, and the wealth gap immediately widens.
Download Generational Wealth Data Here
Quality of Work
Pushout: How a Pandemic is Reversing Workplace Gains for Black & Latinx Breadwinners
“ And even when I returned to work, I went to work in fear.”
— SHELLEY, NEW YORK
Told that working hard is part of the social contract in America, the majority of Black and Latinx breadwinners are working or self-employed. While these hard-working families believe in the American Dream, they feel their hard work is invisible and unrewarded.