FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
Workplace flexibility leads to a healthier work-life balance. March 13 marks the 5th anniversary of President Trump’s COVID-19 emergency declaration. In the wake of the pandemic, telework increased drastically, particularly for workers in professional and managerial jobs. This allowed businesses to keep operating and employees to continue earning a paycheck while also helping to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Hybrid work models continued to grow in popularity post-COVID, and full-time in-office policies dropped from 49 percent in 2023 to [...]
Maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) can play a critical role in counting and documenting maternal deaths, understanding why they occurred, and supporting evidence-based solutions to the US maternal health crisis. Sadly, instead of supporting this important work, some states are trying to push their committees, outspoken members, and the critical data they review into the shadows. Unsurprisingly, the same states that are hostile toward abortion are now directing that hostility toward the professionals who review and make recommendations about [...]
Hope may be hard to come by this post-election season, but if you’re looking for bright spots, look no further than the remarkable “firsts” sworn into the 119th Congress, as well as statehouses across the country, this week. In addition to the monumental election of two Black women—Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Lisa Blunt-Rochester (D-DE)—to the US Senate, US Representative Sarah McBride (D-DE) made history in November as the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. McBride was already the [...]
For the first time in electoral history, the US Senate will have two Black women—Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD)—in its ranks simultaneously. Prior to these wins, only three Black women—Carol Mosely Braun (1993–1998), Kamala Harris (2017–2021), and Laphonza Butler (2023–2024)—had ever served in the Senate. Despite Black women making up 8 percent of the country’s population, they were only 5.4 percent of all voting members of Congress in the last congressional session. Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks’s historic [...]
November 21 was Native Women’s Equal Pay Day, marking the end of this year’s series of events highlighting the gender wage gap faced by women in various groups. Looking back at IWPR’s research on this critical issue, the data show that, almost across the board, wage gaps worsened for women, marking the first time the gender wage gap has widened significantly in 20 years. Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) women marked their Equal Pay Day on April [...]
Limited access to affordable and quality child care has been a longstanding issue across the United States. The situation is especially precarious in the Aloha State, where child care availability falls short of families’ needs, and child care costs rank the highest in the country. Last month, the Nurturing Wāhine Fund* invited me to Hawaiʻi to discuss how the high cost and undersupply of child care hinder parents—especially mothers—from fully participating in the workforce. During my visit, I spoke with [...]
