Financial Capabilities of Adults with Disabilities: Findings from the 2012 FINRA Investor
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Financial Capabilities of Adults with Disabilities: Findings from the 2012 FINRA Investor Education Financial Capability Study – Live Captioning Transcript
>> Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's Real Economic Impact Network monthly webinar. Today that topic is the Financial Capabilities of Adults with Disabilities, findings from the FINRA Investor Education Financial Capability Study. My name is Elizabeth Jennings, I'm going to be the moderator. I'm director of training and technical assistance here at National Disability Institute. And I'm really thrilled to be here with you today to share this information with you and to help you better understand the findings and how it tells a story of the financial capability of individuals with disabilities. I like to invite my colleagues, Nakia Matthews, to provide us with some housekeeping tips.
>> Thank you, Elizabeth. Audio for today's webinar is being broadcast to your computer. Please make sure that your speakers are turned on or your head phones are plugged in. You can control the audio via the audio broadcast panel, if you accidentally close this panel or if the sound for the webinar stops, you can reopen the audio broadcast panel by going to the top menu, communicate and then join audio broadcast.
>> If you do not have some capabilities on your computer or if you prefer to listen by phone, you can dial the toll or toll-free number that you see here and enter the meeting code. You do not need to enter an attendee ID. Real-time captioning is provided during this webinar. These captions can be found in the media viewer panel which appears in the lower right-hand corner of the webinar. If you want to make the BDM your -- media viewer panel larger you can do so by minimizing other panels and conversely, if you do not need the media viewer panel, you can minimize it. We will have time at the end of the webinar for questions. Please use the chat or Q&A talk to send any questions that you may have to either Elizabeth Jennings Army, Nakia Matthews, and will answer those questions at the end. If you are listening by phone only and not late and the web portion, you may ask questions by e-mailing them directly to Elizabeth at [email protected].
>> Please note that the webinar is being recorded and materials will be placed on the NDI website at www.realeconomicimpact.org. If you experience any technical tall difficulties, please use the check to me a message, or you may e-mail me at [email protected].
>> Before we get started I want to take a moment to thank you to the sponsors of the Real Economic Impact Network, Bank of America, Walmart, Acorda Therapeutics, Burton Blatt Institute, Baxter cues University, and our partners at the IRS. For those of you who are new to our series, National Disability Institute is a national research and development organization with the mission to promote income preservation and asset development to persons with disabilities. We are the first national nonprofit position to build a better future for Americans with disabilities. Our Real Economic Impact Network is an alliance of organizations and individuals who are dedicated to advancing the economic empowerment of individuals with disabilities and other low income populations across the US. The network consists of whether 900 partners and more than 100 cities nationwide. The networking nonprofits, community coalitions, asset development organizations, financial education initiatives, corporations, private sector businesses, federal state local government agencies and individuals of families with disabilities. The partners joined forces to promote access to and inclusion of people with disabilities in the economic mainstream. You may have already heard about my free taxes, the initiative is about to launch for this year's tax season. If you haven't, we wanted to take just a moment to make sure that it is on your radar. My free taxes is a national initiative, a sponsorship of the Walmart foundation that is facilitated by United Way, Goodwill industries international and National Disability Institute. My free taxes as a platform powered by H&R Block, the only tax filing software that offers free federal and state tax preparation assistance to qualified individuals in all 50 states. To make sure my free taxes is successful we partner with folks in more than 1000 -- I'm sorry, we have partnerships with more than 1000 community, nonprofit and faith-based organizations, all across the nation. And, they work together to make sure that low income individuals and moderate income individuals, as you can have a pretty high income in order to use my free taxes, are able to utilize the software and how their taxes done for free. We're always open to more partners, so if you would like more information about being a partner and utilizing my free taxes for those individuals that you serve for yourself, or for your colleagues, we hope that you will join us. There is an affiliate portal available to you at affiliate.myfreetexes.com, or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. I'm not going to hand it over to Michael Morris that we hope that you find this session informative in the work that you do.
>> Hello, everyone. We have I think a very important topic which is to understand the findings from the financial capability study, which was first done by the FINRA foundation, we will talk more about that. And the work that National Disability Institute did to isolate data in terms of people with disabilities to learn more about financial status, financial behavior, and financial knowledge. Key aspects of the findings is learning about people with disabilities as compared to people without disabilities, in terms of making ends meet, planning ahead, managing financial products, and making informed financial decisions. We will review the findings, which we released in a report at the national press club just this past July, we will share with you our own policy recommendations, and also, before we are done, take questions from you and hopefully I can provide answers. What I expect will be outcomes from you participating with us today is to gain a better understanding of the FINRA Investor Education Financial Capability Study , key aspects of the findings when we isolate the responses from individuals with disabilities, what are the implications of these findings? Related to future, current and future financial prosperity, and stability for people with disabilities, and then, what can we do about it. What we propose that a national level and I also have some suggestions for you at a state or local level.
>> As I mentioned, this report, which is really a groundbreaking report, establishes for the first time a baseline for us to look at for years ahead, is the report issued by National Disability Institute done in collaboration with researchers at Syracuse University, Nicole Conroy and Katherine McDonald, and, this will be really a great opportunity for you to learn more about what we learned from digging into the data. We will take you through background and research methods, findings and conclusions.
>> So little bit about background. We know across the country that one in five families has a person with a disability, as a family member. We know that in terms of the overall US population, depending on what state you live in, 12-19% of the US population has some type of disability. We know that people with disabilities often are not in the labor force, and about 1/5 people with disabilities indicate that they do not have the ability to work. Why or what are the results of people with disabilities not being in the labor force? Well obviously, economic disparities, raider possibilities of living at or below the poverty level, lack of employment drives people to that poverty status. Often because of number of hours worked, less earnings, less overall household income and other said, overall poverty.
>> So this year is the 24th anniversary year since the passage of the Americans with disabilities act back in 1990. We know that much has changed in the world around us in terms of increased accessibility, removal of physical barriers, whether that is in place is operated by public government, or those private places retail, movie theaters, restaurants, everything. We have greater accessibility. But we also know 24 years after the passage of the act, employment and economic status has changed very little. Research has focused on employment challenges rather than on the financial capability of people with disabilities. What is financial capability? Just so that we have a common understanding of terms, it's the ability to make informed financial decisions and attain economic stability and security. The FINRA study particularly looks out for areas. Making ends meet, planning ahead, managing financial products, and making informed by Nancy decisions.
>> The FINRA study really establishes a benchmark for people across the country. It was first done in 2009, and then it was repeated in 2012. They are currently working on the next survey, the specific questions, which will be done in 2015. What FINRA has done in the past and will do again next year is survey 25,000 people across the country, people in every state. They have looked particularly after a subset of samples of people in the military, they slice and dice through the data to look at people based on economic status, they look at people based on educational backgrounds, they also have looked at differences between people responded based on gender, race and that the city. Overall, the survey contains about 85 questions. As I said, the data set includes 25,509 respondents, and, within these 80+ questions, there is one question, it is not the most perfect question, but it is the question that begins to enable us to establish a baseline of information. In this question, people with disabilities were asked about their employment status and whether they were permanently sick, disabled or unable to work. We were then able to compare the respondents to the one question, with people without disabilities. We were able to compare people who are single versus married and compare as well with people with incomes of less than $25,000. And overall, our report offers where we found differences with any of these populations of 5% or more.
>> So, the findings offer for us, really for the first time, as I said, a baseline. What this slide shares with you is that 1363 of 25,000 people, or roughly 5% of the sample size, indicated that they were either permanently sick, disabled, or unable to work. And, you see the other choices they could have entered into, working full- time, retired, homemaker working part-time, at priest laid off, self-employed, full-time student. So, a person had to choose between these different characteristics and 1363, 5% of the sample, identified as permanently disabled or unable to work. What we found from our findings is that those with disabilities were more likely to be over 35 years of age, or likely to be white or likely to be single, more likely not to have children, more likely to have a high school education or less, so the opposite of those people with out this abilities were more likely to show they were college-educated, or have graduated from college here in also, there were more likely to have less than $15,000 annual household income.
>> Now let's share the findings in the four core areas, where people were asked to respond. The first one is making ends meet. And, with making ends meet, the first area to look at is greater difficulty covering expenses. So, what this is about, really, is that people have income. People may have income from a job, and people may have income because they are on Social Security benefits, they may have income from investments, what this first slide shares with you is that people with disabilities had significantly greater difficulty covering expenses. What we saw was that only 20% of people with disabilities indicated that this was not at all difficult, based on whatever sources of income come what income they had monthly, it was not difficult to cover expenses. But, twice as many people without disabilities said it was not at all difficult. So, twice as more likely without a disability to not have difficulty covering expenses.
>> We also learned that people with disabilities were more likely to spend more than income. And here again, we see that people with disabilities spending more than their income, 22% as compared to without disabilities, about 18%. The next slide talks about one's personal level of satisfaction with personal finances. And here you see some pretty major discrepancies or variances between people with and without disabilities. People with disabilities reported that they were only 10%, 10% of the sample indicated very satisfied where they are with personal finances. That is only one out of 10. That compares with one out of four of people without disabilities. And in terms of not at all satisfied, there was 50% of people with disabilities indicating they are not satisfied with their personal finances, only 30% of people without disabilities set they were not at all satisfied. >> We also learned that people with disabilities have greater financial stress, more likely to make a late mortgage payments, more likely to overdraw a checking account, we also saw that people with disabilities were much more likely to have as their major source of income, not income, John, but actually income from government sources like Social Security.
>> We also learned that people with disabilities were more likely to have unpaid medical bills, and overall experience raider financial fragility. When we asked people with disabilities how confident are you that you could come up with $2000 if some unexpected need arose within the next month, so an emergency, a financial emergency, may be a healthcare costs, maybe a car breaks down, but, something that meant that the person needed to immediately access $2000. Well here again we saw some pretty major discrepancies. I'm certain I could not come up with $2000. 50% of the disability population, one into said they are certain they could not come up with the money. In case of whatever emergency that they might be facing. That is double the rate for people without disabilities, only 24% of people without disabilities, 24% with kids, 22% with no kids or an average of 23%. So, half as likely to be concerned that the could not come up with that money in an emergency. So let's go to a second area of planning ahead. People are familiar with the term, I hope, rainy day fund. Again, it's about setting money aside because again, it's not just a one-time emergency but perhaps a person was laid off on their job, the question was, set aside emergency fund to cover your expenses were three months. Okay? Well, for people with disabilities, the overwhelming answer was 81% said not possible. For people without disabilities, only 16% said that was not possible. And we can even compare this for people with income under $25,000, and that is where you begin to see may be some similarities to these are people with income under $25,000, without disabilities, where they may be able to have set aside emergency funds that could cover their expenses for three months. No was the answer for 77%, still less than the 81% of people with disabilities.
>> The next slide looks at less likely to plan for retirement. The question was about, have you really thought through and figure out your retirement savings needs? So, for people with disabilities, who are not retired, only 17% have really said that they really had figured out retirement savings needs. And, even for those who have retired, only 40% indicated that they have really figure this out. Now, compare that with people without disabilities, 38% of people without disabilities were currently not retired had figure this out. So here we go again with more than double. So, significant difference now here's another one that was rather surprising. In the data. Less likely to plan for a child's education. So, for people with disabilities, overwhelmingly, 84% said no, only 11% said yes. With people without disabilities, 62% have said no, and, yet, 35% three times as many, said, yes, we are planning for our child's education.
>> We then looked at findings related to investments and financial risk. And, for people with disabilities, here again, they were less likely to take financial risks. One could guess that some of that has to do with, well, overall, they have less income when we looked at that particular variable. Less likely to be in the workforce, less likely to see the amount of resources that they have grown. So when the question was asked, were people with disability dating/participating in employment retirement account, here again, major discrepancies, 18% of people with disabilities said that they were, yes, you put account. For people without disabilities, three times that number, 53% were participating in an employer retirement accounts. What about other investment vehicles? Maybe looking at a home as an investment that would appreciate and help with retirement? Or, looking at outside employer-provided retirement account, setting up different types, a Roth, IRA, things like that, only 8% of people with disabilities who again answer this question who said they self identify with disability, and they are currently not working, only 8% were looking at alternative retirement account. This compares to people without disabilities of 29%. So, three times more likely a person without a disability not only were they having employer-provided retirement accounts, but they also work much more likely to have other retirement pickles. Now, what about having no retirement investments? I'm sorry, I misread that. Having nonretirement investments, only 10% of people with disabilities , three times that, 36% of people without disabilities. So, the notion of investments is not really a major part of the lives of people with disabilities through as we know are three times more likely to be living in poverty, almost 4 times more likely to be unemployed, not taking financial risks because they have much less to risk, and you really are not in this world of freely planning and better education. Next is managing financial products. Here again, people with disabilities did not fare as well. There were less like a home owners, less likely to have mortgages or equity loans, less likely to have a home equity. And, when we look at people with disabilities and people who are single versus some type of parter, only -- for homeowners compared to 59%. In terms of having a mortgage, 53% of people with disabilities, yes, people without disabilities, 61%. In terms of participation in some way with an equity loan, and of course, you have to own a home to be able to get an equity loan, only 11% of people with disabilities have an equity loan and that compared with 18% of people without disabilities. In terms of other findings, we learned that people with disabilities were less likely to have a credit card, less likely to pay off credit cards in full, and, less likely to have student loans. And, we can kind of walk through these, each one, and can make some guesses, educated guesses about why. Well, less likely to have credit cards, if you are unemployed, you're probably also dealing with significant debt, you are probably also in a situation in terms of approval for a credit card, less likely to be approved. In terms of paying off credit cards in full, again, the lack of income, the lack of stable financial resources outside of perhaps a fixed income, Social Security or other benefits means that in fact the person is getting into a further or worsening position. Getting into more debt. More debt means you that you are paying more interest and the likelihood is that that situation will continue to spiral. The lack of student loans is not indicative of, oh, well people with disabilities had the means to go to post secondary education and did not need a loan, they have the financial resources. In fact it means the opposite. What it means is there are less people with disabilities at a post secondary education level. Less likely to be in community colleges, colleges, universities, and as a result, lesser student loans. We also learned that they're more likely to carry a balance on a credit card and accrue interest. To use credit cards for cash advances, and if any of you, I'm sure, have looked at with the interest rates are on a cash advance on a credit card, you are going to see double-digit numbers. And, I think very significant for us, and for many of you who are part of the Real Economic Impact Network, who are working with low income people, including people with disabilities, is this more likely to use non-bank borrowing. So, less likely to be looking to traditional financial institutions for doing financial transactions, and as a result, we know the interest cost, the cost of borrowing is going to be significantly higher than a traditional financial institution. The final areas financial knowledge and decision- making. And, here, what trend it is asked a series of questions to test people's financial literacy. There were questions about risk, there were questions about housing or home mortgages, there were questions about understanding the fluctuation of bond prices, but understanding how inflation affects us, and, there were questions about interest rates. Well, here again, there were fewer correct responses, like people with disabilities to every one of these five areas of inquiring. Regarding risk, people with disabilities, only one in three got the question right. As compared to one in two of people without disabilities. On the question about mortgages, people with disabilities did better than questions about risk, about 65% answered it correctly, but, that still was less than people without disabilities, 76% answered the question right. Bond pricing, not very strong scores by either people with or without disabilities, but only one in five people with disabilities were able to get this question right, about 21% whereas for people without disabilities, not that much higher, about 29% got it right. Some discrepancies for the question about inflation, 66% of the people without disability got it right, 62% cash and on the interest rate question, people with disabilities. Better, but not as good as their nondisabled peers, 64% got the question right, but 76%, three out of four, of people without disabilities got the question right. So, what does all of this tell us? Where are we and what does it mean? That is what I hope I can help decipher all of these data points for you. Well, there are a number of conclusions, and I think they are important conclusions were all about in the work that we're doing. Whether you're doing this work in terms of advancing, better financial stability and security, to people with and without disabilities, whether you're at the local, state or national level, -- for people with disabilities, albeit it was a small sample of people identified with a disability and they had to identify as with a disability and unable to work. So, this will be pressed the numbers. There probably were some people who were surveyed in the 25,000 people who think of themselves as a person with a disability, but they are in the workforce, either full or part-time, or they are self-employed. Those were the other choices that they had here, and those did not help us further, by further digging into the numbers and saying, oh, well this person is self-employed and have a disability, we don't know that. So, we were left with one question of 5% sample, identify with a disability and I'm out of work. What does that say to us? Well, for people with disabilities as compared to people without disabilities, greater difficulty making ends meet. Greater challenges in participating and really planning for the future. Less likely to have actually ever seen or talked to anyone about financial planning. Much poorer management of financial products. Much greater use of nontraditional financial service places, like check cashing places or the way to get a loan is taking a cash advance on a credit card. And then of course, lower financial literacy in terms of knowledge, in terms of specific areas that could help them really make better informed financial decisions. We also learned something else from the numbers. That people with disabilities are at risk for greater financial hardship and economic instability, but, we got into the numbers and for those 5% sample, we went even farther. And I think this is perhaps one of the most telling findings from our study. When we looked at the 5%, that roughly 1300 or 1400 people with disabilities who responded as I said, not in the workforce, self identifying with a disability, those at the bottom of the bottom here, in terms of where they are and ask him. To the poverty line, as compared to others, based on gender, race or educational background, or level of employment, here is, I think, one of the most telling findings from our study. We learned that from within people with disabilities, who was during the worst? And what we learned was that women, what we learned was single respondents versus couples, or someone with a partner, we learned that nonwhite respondents were faring worse than those who are white. We also learned that younger respondents were doing worse than those who are older and not surprising, because of the heavy concentration of people with disabilities at the lower end of the economic spectrum, both out little income were also faring worse. So, within this diverse country of ours, with people who we can define in so many ways by individual. Restricts, gender, race,, educational background, age, what we see is that cutting across the diverse the of people in our community, wherever you are in this country, that people with disabilities are probably at the very most vulnerable line. Least likely to protect themselves, in terms of being prey to financial abuse, or people taking advantage of them with different types of financial products and services, less likely to plan for the future, or even think about the future, less likely or unable to take some risk to help grow their money, their financial resources, less financially literate, less knowledgeable about the range of information that would help them make better informed financial decisions, poor management of financial products, greater difficulty making ends meet, and overall, clearly the most in need of our focus attention.
>> At the time that we release this port in July, we offer, we said to those who are with us at the national press club, the event actually featured after I presented on the findings, we had a panel of federal leaders, we had senior officials from the US Department of Labor, from the consumer financial protection Bureau, from the Social Security Administration, who did I leave out? Social Security, labor, consumer financial protection Bureau, while, and the IRS. And, we asked each of them, so what is your view when you hear these new findings? And, there was a clear consensus of opinion. We need to move more, we need to realize that these issues require urgent attention. And, each in their own way talked about things that are underway, things that they are planning to do in terms of activity. Clearly this is not the response ability of anyone federal agency or one public agency, but, we all have a role to play to sort of response, or, how are we going to lift up and support people with disabilities who clearly, from this baseline data, are the most economically vulnerable? We propose to three recommendations to both the federal officials that were there, others that were there, and others that were willing to listen to us. The first, and I think important to recognize, is there isn't any magic solution, there is no strategy that is quickly going to reverse the findings of this study. A series of steps will be needed to be made to move us forward. For people with disabilities to gain greater access to the economic mainstream, and to have equal opportunity to achieve their American dream. We offer three recommendations. The first one, and I think that is where all of you come into play, for sure. The first one is that we urgently, and with all of our collective efforts, need to design and test innovative strategies to engage financial institutions and players, government and community groups, to work together to design and implement bold new intervention strategies. We need to leverage public funding and government infrastructure, schools, colleges and universities, the American job centers, the one-stop career centers where people go and are looking for employment. Social Security area offices, community health centers, aging and disability resource centers, public housing, health exchanges, protection and advocacy agencies, and vocational rehabilitation field office. These are all of the infrastructure of government funding coming from the federal level, close through to the states frequently, and sometimes flows directly as well to the local community, to the community level. What we need to be thinking about is, where can we experiment? Where can we bring new knowledge, new support, into play. If a person is coming into an American job center looking for a job, it should be a place that can also get their taxes done for free. It should be a place that can also have a class that they can attend to improve their financial literacy. If it is a Social Security area office, it is not only about finding out the status of your benefits, but, could there also be a link to other resources in the community where a person might get financial counseling or coaching? Where they might go for financial education, where all sort who else can they talk to? Within public housing agencies, again, working people gain access to information that actually helps them understand that there are a wide array of community resources, public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit. We need to blend in braid financial capability training and support within our large education, health, human service delivery systems. We are seeing this beginning to happen, we are seeing this happening with leadership, both the federal, state and local level. We are seeing this happen in terms of different agencies looking at how we work together, how do we not just refer people from one agency to the next, but, can we call locate, can we make it easier and simpler for people to gain access to financial strategies that will improve their current financial status? The second recommendation is establishing across system task force to build a collaboration strategy. We know there are so many federal agencies to touch people with disabilities every day, every week, every month. There are over 12 million people on Social Security benefits with people disabilities. We know that there are thousands of people every week who are participating and receiving some type of assistance from the vocational rehabilitation system. We know there are thousands of youth in transition who are sitting down with Jones lawyers, transition core Nader's entry about what is going to happen next, are they going to continue education? Are they going to look for work? Where is the clear pathway for them? And, we know that there are so many federal agencies involved from the IRS to the administration on children and families with individual development accounts, we know at the Department of Labor, with a workforce development system, we know in the Department of Education, with the vocational rehabilitation system, we know about how important to the lives of so many thousands and millions of people with disabilities, these are healthcare systems, Medicaid and Medicare, so, what's clear is there are lots of people trying to do things here, but no one in charge. No one who is saying we need to work together more to be more effective and try to solve this challenge, this set of challenges. So, we propose that the president by executive order based on this data, that we have shared, push forward with an 18 month time limited presidential task force to explore policy and practice challenges that are facing people with disabilities every day, and keep them from advancing their financial capabilities. Both youth and adults with disabilities. We ask for such a task force to identify federal, state and community models of which there are many, where systems are working together. There is cross system collaboration. And, we ask this task force identify specific policy barriers, and propose solutions to improve and form financial decision-making, capability and economic status. Our third recommendation is one less about what you can do, but is more about the future research to be done. As I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, in 2015, the FINRA foundation will again go out and survey over 25,000 people. Including some people with disabilities. What we are working with FINRA now on is to try to improve the nature and scope of questions so that we get a better sample of people who can self identify with a disability. So, if there are people with a disability who are also working, we want to include them in our results. If there are people with disabilities who are self-employed, we want to include them as well. We want to understand more, when we talk about people with disabilities, that is just one giant block of people which is as diverse and different as anyone else. There is a different set of questions which can get out really understanding the diversity spectrum of disability, so that we can see if people with certain types of disabilities are faring better than others. And then try to understand why and most often we are going to come back to the issues around employment. But, there are other issues in play. So, we are hopeful that there'll be some questions added which will give us a better understanding of who is this group of people with disabilities, to be more inclusive, more comprehensive, and as a result, give us more understanding from a to be able to break down differences, age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity as well as type of disability, to understand more about the diversity of people with disabilities , and their current financial status, behavior, and knowledge. I hope that I have given you information that arms you with new fax, new figures, and clearly new challenges. No one solution is out there, as I mentioned earlier. No one agency, whether it is a community, not-for-profit, Mayor's office, state Medicaid agency, or an American job center, is going to turn this around immediately, or turnaround in terms of what people with disabilities are facing , in terms of financial instability, without bringing together community resources. And, bringing together the leadership in a community to say, what more can we do, and what can we do differently? Starting in our school chums with you, and moving on into adulthood, there are lots of opportunities. National Disability Institute , just two months ago, received a contract award from the consumer financial protection Bureau to enable us to test innovative strategies. We expect over the next five years, beginning next year, to be working with community partners, the mayor's offices, United Way, centers for independent living, and other groups in 14 cities around the country. And ultimately, learn more about what works and doesn't work to improve the financial capability and the financial stability and security of people with disabilities. Expect to work and capture data over time, on potentially as many as 15,000 individuals with disabilities. No one has ever attempted anything of this size, of this scope, and our intent is not only to learn what works and does not work, but potentially to identify one or more sustainable and scalable models that will enable us to work with you more and to work with funders that you work with, public and private, and recognize that there is no reason that people with disabilities need to remain the most economically vulnerable. The most outside the economic mainstream. So, I hope that we have challenged you with information you can use. I believe that this report is on the National Disability Institute website, you can download it to get your own copy, and again, this is the kind of information to sit down with public funders, to sit down with collaborators, current or future collaborators, of other organizations, entities 80 in your community to talk about what we can do differently and how we can work together better, how we can put together and test some interesting strategies that are going to make the difference in terms of people with disabilities being more engaged in the work force, and more engaged in the economic mainstream. So, I will stop there and open up to questions that I see are beginning to come in from around the country. And, we will see if we can give you answers as well.
>> Thank you so much, Michael. As Michael mentioned, now is the time to put your answers into the chat or question-and-answer box and we will get started. Some of the questions that have come in have been around how to download the slides and where the report is located. Please take a look in the chat, both at today's slides and a copy of our report are available for download in the chat. So Michael, one of the questions is, is there a white paper, or is there one in development of a white paper on this topic would be very helpful in grants development?
>> We look at the report itself as a comprehensive white paper. I believe. I don't have one sitting in front of me, I think the report is about 70 pages. It has an executive summary, it is in the public domain, you can use charts, there are many, many charts and grant proposals, you may be using with either local, state or national funders, public or private, we put this information out there so that you can use it and we certainly would be willing to work with you at any level. If you need to somehow additional information or want some assistance in terms of, well, how do we frame this set of challenges to actually build funding from one or more funding sources to actually begin to create solutions.
>> Another question asked is where we find that full FINRA report on financial capability in the public domain?
>> Great. It can be found at usfinancialcapability.org, and you can download their full report that came out last year in 2013 which is about the 2012 data which includes data that we analyzed, and I believe it is where you'll find the 2009 survey results which I believe were reported in 2010. >> Thank you, and for those of you on the line, that link was also put into the chat box. Another question is, it should be fairly simple to ask -- at the disability question to research, do you know of any progress being made in that area?
>> Yes, we recently met with the FDIC which also puts out a report that establishes a baseline that came out about two weeks ago with the un-banked and under banked and we met with the FINRA researcher several times , and in that report, they did use a more comprehensive set of questions for people to identify or self identify with a disability, and so the data that you collected differentiate between say a person with a sensory disability person is a person who might be mobility challenged. And differences that we can learn based on really disaggregating the data. We actually will be working with the FDIC and do a similar report to this FINRA report that gets at the depth of that data so that we can have yet another baseline. We don't expect to complete that until the spring of 2015 and then we will make that public. In answer to your question, I do believe that our discussions with FINRA will help, and that although we do not know anything definite yet, I do believe that when they do develop their final survey instrument for 2015, they're also going to adopt a more robust set of questions so that we can really get a bigger picture of what is the financial status, knowledge and behavior of people with disabilities.
>> We would also like to encourage all of you on the line to take a look at your own intake form and the way that you collect data. I know that many of you on the line are part of avid building coalitions or belong to organizations working on reducing poverty for all people in your community, and I like to ask you to take a look at those to see, do you ask a question regarding disability, and for those of you on the line who are from disability organizations, do you ask any questions about a person's financial health? If you are interested in being more inclusive of those questions on any of the forms that utilize, please reach out to us, we would be happy to assist you in getting that done. So one final question, Michael, is, do you have any suggestions on how we utilize the report to make impact in our local areas?
>> You know, I think there is no simple roadmap. I think the upside and positive news is as National Disability Institute staff work with so many of you and others across the country, there are a lot of roadmaps being created. I don't think that there is any simple way, I do believe that in many communities, United Way is a natural convener and facilitator to bring together lots of organizations in the nonprofit side as well as financial institutions, to kind of come together and look at what we can do. In a growing number of cities, there is the cities for financial empowerment, I believe there are almost 18 cities that are in some way connected with that group, CFE. You can look them up, and in many of those cities, we are in discussion and working on how we can bring collaborators together and look at improving financial education, counseling, coaching and other kinds of strategies to help people with disabilities . We have that kind of activity going on in Louisville, we have had previous discussions in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and other cities. So, you may want to see whether in your city, your CFE city, because there's a lot going on, and the Mayor's office, the mayor and mayor's office is on financial empowerment, financial inclusion, are getting created new ones all of the time. In cities like Boston is going to be one of the next cities but often that is financial inclusion. So, that's another way. I also think that if you are at a community level, and you are a disability related organization, I think I would reach out to also talking with other disability related organizations, but also talk with your local financial institutions, your credit unions, and the, what are they doing for people at a low and moderate income level? In many cases, there are ongoing activities already, and the issue may be that they have not got as much about marketing and outreach to people with disabilities. So, I think those are some of the ways to look at the future, I think the final one I'll mention is in the recent reauthorization of the workforce innovation and opportunity act, now sometimes referred to by the acronym WIOA, there is, in the new statute, the opportunity for funding from a state level, from a state Department of Labor, or a state Department of workforce development, depending on what they're called in your state, has the discretion to use some of the dollars that flow from the US Department of Labor, to focus on financial literacy. This could be for use, it could also be for adults. And, they define financial literacy to be helping people make better informed financial decisions. Helping youth work on budgeting, and understanding the meaning of credit and how to reduce debt. So, it has a pretty broad and comprehensive definition. Now, here again, the state does not have to spend money in this way, but, it is an option for a state to consider. And in the next 12 to 18 months, each state will be developing a unified state plan that they will have to send to the Department of Labor for approval. There should be public comment periods, but here again, talk with your local workforce investment Board, talk to your state department of labor, because this may be an area that, frankly, they should be involved, and they should put resources into how we are going to solve some of the challenges that we talked about today.
>> And for more information on that, you can connect to the NDI leader center, leadcenter.org. I want to extend my thanks to Michael and all of you on the line, we know that you are busy and appreciate you taking the time to learn about this topic. We hope that you'll take the time against -- again next month and join us for our webinar, boosting financial stability for those with tax credits, that Will Take Place, Wednesday at 3 PM. I also want to point to our inboxes. Over the past few weeks we've received an e-mail asking for your input. It is a survey. Once you completed, you're entered into a drawing, and it allows us to get information from you that will inform the training and technical assistance that we provide to the network next year. So, please take about 10 min. to complete that survey, and share your input with us, we would be very happy to receive it. We want to again thank our sponsors, Bank of America, Walmart, Acorda Therapeutics, the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, the IRS and thank you to all of you who are apart of the Real Economic Impact Network. We thank you for your partnership and we look forward to connecting with you all of the time. So thanks, everyone, have a great, great week.
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