By Juliana Zhou and Cara Brumfield
There are persistent, historic health inequities in the United States, particularly regarding race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, LGBTQ+ identity, and more. This report discusses the need for equitable data collection standards and recent updates to the federal race and ethnicity data standard, the Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (SPD15). The National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) and BlueCross BlueShield Association (BCBSA) formed the Data Equity Coalition to advocate for improved data policies to ensure health equity.
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), part of the Data Equity Coalition, emphasizes the importance of robust race and ethnicity data to address structural inequities in health care.
CLASP and the Data Equity Coalition recommends the following four actions to advance data equity:
The report emphasizes the intersectional nature of health equity, advocating for a comprehensive understanding that includes factors such as poverty, gender identity, immigration status, disability, and sexual orientation. CLASP calls for multi-sectoral collaboration among stakeholders to address health inequities effectively, emphasizing the need for robust and publicly available race and ethnicity data to monitor and evaluate interventions.
>> Data Equity Coalition: Standardizing Data to Advance the Health Equity Movement
By Hechinger Report
(Excerpt from newsletter)
The CLASP report calls for federal and state programs, including Head Start, to collect discipline data on publicly funded centers and track disparities by race and ethnicity. The report also suggests the creation of a federal office tasked with protecting the civil rights of the youngest children to respond when protected groups are disproportionately punished by teachers. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights already does this for older students.
Read the full newsletter here.
By Tiffany Ferrette, Alycia Hardy & Alyssa Fortner
This brief will outline the history of inequitable disciplinary practices in child care and early education—and in the context of American society more generally. In addition, the brief will examine how equitable data practices can uncover important, program-level information that tells the story of current realities and can center racial equity in data planning and collection. Finally, this brief will explore current child care systems such as the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start, which are microcosms of the larger privatized system. Equitable data practices are a key first step when examining all these issues and strengthening early care and education experiences.
By Louis Jacobson
(Excerpt)
“The data aren’t consistent across studies, and the impact varies depending on the type and length of preschool enrollment and the racial and socioeconomic background of the students,” said Archana Pyati, a spokesperson for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
Read the full article here.
By Suzanne Wikle and Elisabeth Wright Burak
States are grappling with how to more effectively support their child
care workforce, including ensuring providers have access to affordable
health care. Just like parents, frontline early education professionals
are better able to support children in their care when they are healthy. A
healthy caregiver is especially important for young children because brain
development in the youngest children is influenced by relationships with
caregivers at home and in child care. Early education professionals need
access to affordable health care in order to realize their best health and to
best serve the children in their care.
Like other workers with low incomes, child care workers often work for small businesses or are self-employed in family child care homes and lack
access to affordable coverage options. Nationally, 16 percent of child care
workers under age 65 are uninsured, compared to 13.3 percent among all
uninsured adults under age 65 in 2019. Notably, the rates of uninsurance
for child care workers in the 12 states that have not yet expanded
Medicaid is almost three times as high (30.6 percent) as in expansion
states (10.3 percent). This disproportionately affects women of color, as they comprise 40 percent of the early childhood workforce and are more likely to work in early childhood than the K-12 system. States have policy options available to ensure affordable health coverage for low-income workers, including child care professionals. Read more in a joint brief from CLASP, the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, and the BUILD Initiative.
On October 18, 2022, Deputy Executive Director of Policy Elizabeth Lower-Basch provided testimony to Mississippi’s State Legislature on potential reforms to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
By Cameron Johnson, Emily Andrews, and Melissa Young
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) represents the most sweeping piece of legislation to address the climate crisis this century. Moreover, it comes at a pivotal juncture.
In June, the U.S. Department of Energy released the 2022 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), a study providing estimates of employment and workforce characteristics in the energy economy. A major topline was the positive trends in the clean energy economy. However, the report revealed an unfortunate and ongoing challenge and reality for the energy sector: it continues to have difficulty hiring workers and has a pervasive lack of gender and racial diversity.
While the IRA is a major step towards fighting the threat of climate change, Congress’ failure to include significant workforce development investments in the bill may blunt its impact. It may also unintentionally reinforce racial and gender inequities.
Here are three major takeaways from the USEER report and their implications for the green workforce as the IRA takes effect:
The USEER showed positive job growth across the board in clean energy sectors. Electric and hybrid vehicles; batteries for grid storage and electric vehicles; and solar and wind energy all gained new jobs in 2021. Notably, the percentage of employment growth in each of these technologies outpaced U.S. job growth overall. While many of these technologies still haven’t gained back all the jobs lost in the 2020 downturn, all of them are expecting job growth from 2021 to 2022.
While this job growth is promising, meeting emission reduction and clean energy employment goals requires new investments and strategies to spur consumer demand. Here, the IRA’s tax credits can help. They will accelerate the manufacturing of clean energy technology and the building of clean technology manufacturing facilities, both of which will be critical in meeting our emissions reduction goals.
While the clean energy workforce is rising, the USEER points to notable employment declines in the extractive economy – namely in oil, coal, and fossil fuels – in 2021. Jobs in petroleum and coal extraction and mining declined significantly, at about 18 percent of jobs each. Coal electricity generation also lost jobs. These losses continue a downward trend from the previous year. The immediate need to transition to more renewable energy sources is irrefutable. Yet such declines can plunge entire communities into economic devastation. Securing a just transition to renewable energy requires targeted workforce approaches alongside investments in the clean energy economy.
Across various clean energy technologies, overwhelming majorities of employers report finding qualified workers as “very difficult” or “somewhat difficult.” Many say they need increased workforce training and workers with more technical skills. Moreover, infusions into the green economy through the IRA will undoubtedly increase demand.
At the same time, everybody is not participating equally in this growing economy. The USEER identifies significant disparities in the employment of communities that have been historically marginalized. Across clean energy sectors, the workforce is predominantly white and male. The workforce participation rate for women and people of color in clean energy has remained virtually unchanged over the last three years, demonstrating the persistence of these disparities.
As noted in the USEER report, in 2021 Black Americans held only seven percent of jobs in wind technology, and only eight percent in both solar and energy efficiency jobs. In those same technologies, women held 26 percent of energy efficiency jobs and 30 percent of both solar and wind technology jobs. For both groups, these rates fall below the average of their workforce participation nationally.
The funding in the IRA to support the transition to green technology is critical to address the impact of climate change in our country and worldwide. This includes funding for a clean energy technology accelerator that will support the deployment of technologies to reduce emissions in historically marginalized communities. Environmental and climate justice block grants included in the law will also strengthen infrastructure and workforce development in those communities. Nevertheless, this investment is merely a down payment for more comprehensive investment in workforce development.
To address the significant underrepresentation of workers of color and women in the green workforce, while meeting the need for increased training, Congress must increase funding for proven workforce development strategies that bring these populations into clean energy. In particular, Congress must invest in linking historically disadvantaged communities to quality jobs through Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs); pre-apprenticeship programs; subsidized jobs; and a fully funded Civilian Climate Corps. Per its Justice40 initiative, the Biden administration must follow through on its pledge to deliver 40 percent of the benefits of its investments in tackling the climate crisis to disadvantaged communities.
The IRA also includes a provision that provides enhanced tax credits for investments in communities with historically significant employment in extractive jobs. These are disproportionately communities of color and communities with low incomes who sit on the frontline of the energy transition. Alongside the resource allocation, policymakers must follow up on these investments with mechanisms designed to assist the extractive workforce. This must include financial assistance for dislocated workers, matching current skills with clean energy opportunities, and matching the sense of purpose and meaning workers derive from their current work with parallels in the clean energy economy.
The USEER findings lay out that the time for equitable green economy investment is now. The IRA is a meaningful first step toward that end. Congress must pass even stronger legislation that tackles the global climate crisis. In doing so, it must put populations that have been marginalized and energy transition communities on a pathway out of poverty and into prosperity.
CLASP highlights the importance of widening the scope of approaches and tools used to collect data about issues.
March
“We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Indi will lead our 53-year-old national organization into the next phase of growth,” said LaVeeda M. Battle, Esq., a leading civil rights attorney, and chair of CLASP’s Board of Trustees. “After conducting a nationwide search and assessing a strong pool of candidates, the Board and staff were thoroughly impressed by Indi’s formidable talent and skills, as well as his clear passion for advancing economic and racial justice.”
Indi has held senior roles at or advised the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the National Academy of Social Insurance, Liberation in a Generation, the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, and Freedman Consulting. Earlier in his career, he worked at the Center for American Progress and D.C. Hunger Solutions. He has also served as a volunteer policy advisor for the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and President Biden.
“I’m honored and delighted to be joining CLASP – an organization with a half-century track record of marshaling lived experience, careful analysis, technical assistance, and strategic advocacy to advance racial and economic justice,” said Indi Dutta-Gupta. “Olivia Golden is leaving CLASP in an extraordinary position after years of steady growth that has expanded its impact and reach. I look forward to building upon CLASP’s longstanding work at the federal, state, and local level that has for decades improved policies, programs, and practices for many of the families and communities in this country that have been the most marginalized and excluded.”
In 2019, CLASP celebrated its 50th year as a national, nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on economic and social justice advocacy. We work with federal, state, and local policymakers, advocates, and partners to advance policies that reduce poverty, improve the lives of people with low incomes, and create pathways to economic security for everyone. Our work is rooted in a belief that poverty in America is inextricably tied to systemic racism.
CLASP has been on the front lines of both fighting back against harmful administrative and legislative proposals, particularly during the Trump administration, and advancing a vision that is both practical and bold. In the past two years, CLASP has responded to the immediate economic devastation of the COVID pandemic, while also shaping and implementing a longer-term agenda. Through the whole period, CLASP has expanded its leadership of major, high-impact collaborations – such as the 500+ member Protecting Immigrant Family coalition – and deepened its close relationships with on-the-ground leaders and people with lived experience of poverty.
Under Olivia Golden’s leadership, CLASP grew from an organization of about 30 people and a $6 million budget to its current scale of about 50 staff and a $10 million annual budget. During her tenure as executive director, CLASP has addressed a broad range of issues, including adding a new policy team focused on issues facing immigrant families, in addition to expanded work on child care; economic security programs; education, labor, and worker justice; and youth and young adult policy.
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The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is a national, nonpartisan, anti-poverty organization advancing policy solutions for people with low incomes. Because poverty in America is inextricably tied to systemic racism, CLASP focuses its policy and advocacy efforts for economic and racial justice on addressing systemic racism as the primary cause of poverty for communities of color.