Advancing Economic Security for the 21st Century 

The Academy sees a need to bring nuance to the conversation around assuring income in the United States. This involves both assessing needs and offering potential solutions to strengthen income security. The Academy hopes policymakers will utilize all four policy pillars outlined in the report: labor, benefit, protection, and equity. Learn more.

Exploring, Revealing, and Addressing Racial Disparities and Systemic Racism in Social Insurance 

The impacts of systemic racism and racial inequities on social insurance require a deep commitment to explore options that improve equity and ensure all voices, especially those that have been historically marginalized, inform our research, policy, and leadership development efforts. 

Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 and preparing for other emerging risks 

A strong social insurance system protects individuals and society as a whole from the impacts of economic downturns (like during the COVID-19 pandemic), the climate crisis, cyber-security threats, and other risks. 

Strengthening the Future of Workers’ Compensation 

Addressing inequities caused by the lack of federal standards for state programs and by systemic racism in the workers’ compensation system could help fortify the nation’s oldest social insurance program.

In 2022-2023, 50 years after the bipartisan Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws report, impacts are mixed: some states adopted some of the nineteen high-priority policy recommendations, many did not, and some protections that were enacted have since been clawed back. 

Improving Retirement Security for Older Workers

Modernizing the social insurance system to ensure that older workers engaged in physically arduous work and facing compounding factors that make life precarious have access to the benefits they need to retire if they need to or, if they are able and want to, continue to work with dignity.  

Decades of physically arduous work are compounded by multiple factors – health problems, age, racial, and gender discrimination, the increase in non-standard work, and lack of retirement savings – to make life precarious for many older workers. How can we modernize the social insurance system to ensure that workers who need to retire early can do so with dignity, that those who could and want to keep working have the supports to do so, and that those whose disabilities make continued work impossible can access and receive the benefits for which they are eligible? 

Modernizing Unemployment Insurance

A 21st century unemployment insurance (UI) system should deliver functional protection to jobless workers and their families and the economy. Learn more about the Academy’s work to address uneven and long-neglected UI programs through its unemployment insurance task force.

Making Caregiving Accessible and Affordable

Consistent access to quality, affordable care, including long-term services and supports, through a social insurance-based mechanism could ensure that workers and their families can be full, productive contributors to society. Building on the foundations laid in the landmark Designing Universal Family Care report is a step toward that vision. 

Cultivating the Next Generation of Social Insurance Champions 

Ensure the continuing health of social insurance programs that comprise an essential element of our social fabric by bringing young and mid-career professionals into the social insurance network. Inspire public interest in the vision of economic security.