Rooted in Racism
The facts
State of Working America
Child care costs

The ongoing influence of slavery and Jim Crow means high poverty rates and low economic mobility in the South.

These are deliberate outcomes of the Southern economic development model, which is a set of economic policies that can be traced back to the end of slavery when wealthy, powerful Southerners sought to continue to extract the labor of Black men and women with as little compensation as possible. Read more

The Trump administration cited an EPI blog post in yesterday’s announcement of reciprocal tariffs. “Tariffs implemented by President Trump during his first term ‘clearly show[ed] no correlation with inflation’ and had only a fleeting effect on overall prices.” This refers to the steel and aluminum tariffs the piece was analyzing.

The administration’s application of this conclusion to the tariffs being proposed yesterday (and in previous weeks) by the current Trump administration is, at best, misleading. Get the facts 

Between 2019 and 2024, there has been a notable reversal of long-term trends in wage growth. Low-wage workers experienced historically fast real wage growth (adjusted for inflation) and the strongest wage growth compared with workers at all other parts in the wage distribution.

Nevertheless, because pay at the bottom of the distribution started at such a low point in 2019, low-wage workers today continue to suffer from wages that are grossly inadequate to sustain families, and significant wage gaps exist at all points in the distribution across demographic groups. Read more

Child care more expensive than rent? Child care more expensive than public college tuition? That’s the case in most states. 

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, child care is affordable if it costs no more than 7% of a family’s income. This isn’t inevitable—it is a policy choice. Federal and state policymakers can and should act to make child care more affordable, and ensure that child care workers can afford the same quality of care for their own children. Calculate child care costs in your state

EPI in the news

  • GrayTV | April 4, 2025
  • CBS News Radio | April 4, 2025
  • America's Work Force Union Podcast | April 4, 2025
  • Business Insider | April 4, 2025
  • CBS Moneywatch | April 4, 2025
  • VOX | April 4, 2025
  • Lansing City Pulse | April 4, 2025

More EPI in the news