June 6, 2013. In a new briefing paper released today by the Economic Policy Institute, the report finds that 52.0 percent of New York seniors are at risk. See FPI’s press release below.

Contact: James Parrott, Deputy Director and Chief Economist, 212-721-5624 (desk), 917-880-9931 (mobile)

New report: http://www.epi.org/publication/economic-security-elderly-americans-risk

52% of New York seniors are economically vulnerable, the fifth highest among all states.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposals would put many more seniors… (read more)

June 4, 2013. A new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants, paired with labor standards enforcement, would boost economic productivity. Reform would remove barriers to advancement for newly legalized immigrants, create a level playing field for businesses, and align our systems of taxation, social services, and social insurance so that they would function as they are supposed to.

“Immigration reform, done right, would be good for immigrants, but it… (read more)

April 10, 2013. With policymakers in Washington calling for federal tax reform, the Fiscal Policy Institute said it is essential that members of Congress consider the beneficial long-term impacts of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) as well as these credits’ short-run benefits. In emphasizing the importance of making the current temporary enhancements of these credits permanent, FPI pointed to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that… (read more)

March 13, 2013. A report by the National Employment Law Project and the Fiscal Policy Institute shows the dangers of watering down the $9.00 plus indexing minimum wage proposal, which has the backing of most New Yorkers and majorities in both the Senate and the Assembly.  The report details the greater benefits for workers and the state economy from an increase to $9.00 an hour with indexing compared to the proposal for an $8.75 an hour increase without indexing:… (read more)

January 30, 2013. As part of a coalition of community, labor, faith, student and Occupy organizations, the Fiscal Policy Institute has launched a campaign to bring fairness and transparency to New York’s corporate tax system, ending costly loopholes that cost taxpayers and businesses dearly. The coalition is calling on Governor Cuomo and the Legislature to close a series of unfair corporate tax loopholes, raising nearly $1billion for this year’s state budget and leveling the playing field between large out-of-state multinational… (read more)

January 28, 2013. A minimum wage increase included in Governor Cuomo’s budget proposal, released last Tuesday, would raise the paychecks of over 1.5 million low-paid New Yorkers, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project. The Governor’s proposal would raise the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.75 per hour on July 1, 2013, and the increased wages would generate more than $1 billion in new consumer spending, supporting the creation… (read more)

January 7, 2013. Frank Mauro will be stepping down as FPI’s Executive Director at the end of New York’s 2013 Legislative session. Mauro has long been one of Albany’s best known experts on budget and public policy issues from his work at FPI and earlier as Secretary of the NYS Assembly Ways and Means Committee, director of Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink’s Program Development Group, director of research for the last major revision of the New York City Charter, and Deputy… (read more)

August 8, 2012. Today the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a new report showing that a “Cuts Only” approach to reducing the federal deficit would drastically cut federal investments in education, roads and bridges, and disaster relief. Cuts of this magnitude would do great damage to the economy. FPI’s press release (below) highlights the fact that the House-passed “Ryan Budget,” a prime example of the “Cuts Only” approach, would cost New York state and local governments $2.7… (read more)

June 14, 2012. More than one in six small business owners in the United States is an immigrant, according to a new report from FPI’s Immigration Research Initiative. Immigrants – people born in another country – make up 18 percent of all small business owners in the United States. By contrast, immigrants are 13 percent of the population and 16 percent of the labor force, according to the American Community Survey from 2010. That’s a big change from 20 years… (read more)

May 7, 2012. A new report from FPI looks at the importance of jobs in the nonprofit health care and social assistance sector in New York City, and examines how the hardships facing the city’s low-income population – the main constituency served by the nonprofit human services sector – have grown in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the weak recovery over the past three years.

• Full report
• Press release
• Companion report released by the Human

… (read more)