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Journal Article
Tools (Lessons and Strategies) Toward Market Restoration: A Conference Summary
Community development post-recession takes place in an environment that is greatly changed in terms of both demand for and capacity to deliver services. While no community was immune, the places that were most deeply affected by the Great Recession ? and continue to feel its effects ? are often those places that had suffered from disinvestment for decades leading up to it. The tools and strategies that have been developed and relied on by investors, practitioners and advocates ? in some cases for decades ? need to be adapted to the changes, while continuing to meet ever growing demand.
How Is the Challenge of Finding Childcare Affecting Labor Force Participation? Perspectives from Employers Across the Seventh District
Through the Chicago Fed Survey of Economic Conditions (CFSEC) and during roundtable discussions with business, nonprofit, and government leaders, the Chicago Fed asked employers from a variety of sectors for their perspectives on how childcare access has affected labor force availability.1 These survey and roundtable findings contribute to the Chicago Fed’s Spotlight on Childcare—an effort to increase our understanding of how the lack of access to childcare impedes labor force participation in the Seventh Federal Reserve District. In this article, we summarize the responses from over 100 ...
Journal Article
Small business access to capital: alternative resources bridging the gap
Nationwide in the U.S. over the past 15 years, small businesses generated 64 percent of the net new job growth. Small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, a definition used by the Small Business Administration (SBA), represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms, and employ more than half of private sector employees in the United States. Firms with fewer than 50 employees represent 95 percent of all employer firms. Since the recession that began in late 2007, large bank lending to small businesses has fallen by more than 50 percent.
Journal Article
Exploring the Correlations between Health and Community Socioeconomic Status in Chicago
Much research demonstrates that where you live ? and the socioeconomic conditions present in that place ? determine individual-level health outcomes.[1] The premise that individual stressors tend to aggregate themselves into communities with poor socioeconomic status (SES) leads to the conclusion that ?where you live determines how long you live.? As former Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke stated, ?Factors such as educational attainment, income, access to healthy food and the safety of a neighborhood tend to correlate with individual health outcomes in that neighborhood.?[2] These factors ...
Journal Article
Mapping the recovery: sentiment survey of small Business intermediaries in Chicago
The Community Development and Policy Studies (CDPS) division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago distributed a poll to small business intermediaries in the fourth quarter of 2012 to ask about their perceptions of small business conditions in their neighborhoods. The purpose of this poll was to get a better understanding of the small business climate in diverse neighborhoods of the city of Chicago. It was designed to capture perspectives at the neighborhood level, perspectives that are not observable in aggregated data. The results show an array of opinions about the small business climate ...
Journal Article
Industrial cities initiative: working paper summary
"Rust Belt" is an epitaph for cities large and small throughout America's midwestern and northeastern regions. It encapsulates social and economic changes: "population loss, rising crime rates, loss of union jobs particularly in manufacturing, White flights to the suburbs, and a generally declining urban environment," in which massive, but abandoned factories rusted away and scarred the landscape of once vibrant cities.
Journal Article
Investing in Healthy Communities: Ideas to Action for Healthy People, Places, and Planet - A Conference Summary
The Wisconsin Rapids event was the third in a Wisconsin series and built on earlier events in Milwaukee (December 2014)2 and Platteville (July 2015)3. Co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and local leaders, the earlier conferences highlighted the connections between health, community development, and economic development in urban and rural communities, as well as the opportunities for these fields to improve outcomes by working together. This third conference focused on the role of investing to build healthy communities, including how financial investments by banks and socially ...
Childcare Facility Financing: Perspectives from Three Decades of Supporting Childcare Centers
As part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Spotlight on Childcare and the Labor Market, this article focuses on the ways in which the lack of access to childcare is a barrier to employment in the Seventh District. We spoke with Joe Neri, CEO of IFF, a community development financial institution (CDFI) that has served the Midwest childcare sector for more than 30 years.
Journal Article
Preliminary Findings from Focus Groups on Economic Inclusion in Smaller Cities
A growing body of work by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and partners points to challenges that "legacy cities" face in extending economic opportunity to all residents. This article reports findings from a series of focus groups conducted around the 7th District to better understand what city leaders are doing to advance positive labor market outcomes for residents.
Journal Article
Measuring Small Business Financial Health
Throughout the Great Recession and continuing into the recovery, small businesses have played an important role in creating jobs and stabilizing communities. Stories of small business owners overcoming obstacles to provide valuable services and employment are highlighted regularly by pundits, politicians and policymakers alike. However, little attention has focused on the question of what drives the financial health of these often young, often very small businesses.