Building an Economy That Supports All Children Requires Raising the Minimum Wage
15 million children live in households with a worker making less than $15 an hour. Raising the minimum wage will help support them and their families.
15 million children live in households with a worker making less than $15 an hour. Raising the minimum wage will help support them and their families.
Women make up the majority of workers who would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, as they are overrepresented in tipped and low-wage jobs.
Because the majority of minimum wage-earning mothers are breadwinners, raising the federal minimum wage would strengthen economic security for millions of families.
The United States urgently needs a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program that will boost the health and economic well-being of American workers and families.
Women, particularly women of color, have borne the brunt of job losses and caregiving challenges during the coronavirus pandemic and need structural policy change to ensure their full recovery and economic security.
Women—particularly women of color—continue to make noteworthy gains at all levels of government, but bold policies and structural changes are still needed to reach gender parity in U.S. politics.
The collapse of the child care sector and drastic reductions in school supervision hours as a result of COVID-19 could drive millions of mothers out of the paid workforce. Inaction could cost billions, undermine family economic security, and set gender equity back a generation.
Women took the biggest economic hit from the coronavirus-induced recession, and a slowing recovery is increasingly leaving women behind, threatening to set working women back a generation.
The Trump administration has issued dozens of regulations that have threatened women’s progress and cost them billions—revealing a fundamental disregard for women.
Policymakers must consider lessons learned from the emergency paid leave laws passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic in order to design national, permanent paid leave policies that ensure racial, gender, and economic equity and meet the needs of families.
Employers have a pivotal role to play in establishing pay practices within workplaces and correcting the disparities that have eroded Black women’s pay for decades.
Without federal relief funds, many child care programs will close, disproportionately affecting women’s labor force participation.
Existing support systems for domestic violence survivors are proving inadequate during the pandemic and point to the need for a stronger nationwide infrastructure connecting survivors to vital supports and services.
Women, especially women of color, in the United States are more likely to live in poverty than men, and they need robust, targeted solutions to ensure their long-term economic security.
Please join the Center for American Progress for an important conversation with leading economists to discuss the economic status of Black women and the need for a more inclusive economic narrative that prioritizes the real-world challenges Black women face.