All Areas
Report: Intergenerational Poverty in Utah, 2019
Utah’s Intergenerational Welfare Reform Commission has provided its latest update on intergenerational poverty in Utah. Learn more about it here.
Utah Needs a Child-centered Approach to Fighting Poverty
Paul Mero recently wrote an op-ed for the Salt Lake Tribune in which he highlights new research challenging many...
New Research Pinpoints Lives and Circumstances of IGP Children and Families
A new report sheds interesting light on children in intergenerational poverty and their families. Here are the key...
At the Heart of Social and Political Disintegration Is the Plight of Our Poor
In a recent op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, NGFF president and CEO Paul Mero makes the case that through a strategic...
Five Steps to Build a Transcendant Political Culture in Utah
President and CEO Paul Mero recently published an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune providing some basic steps for creating a transcendant political culture in Utah. Here are some excerpts: First, we...
It’s Time to Fight Poverty the “Utah Way”
CEO Paul Mero wrote an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune proposing a compact for poverty issues similar to the Utah Compact created for issues involving immigration. Mero suggests that the following...
Flipping the Script on Poverty
President and CEO Paul Mero wrote an op-ed for the Deseret News explaining that we need to shift the way we see those who are in need and the way we assist them. Here is an excerpt: I contend that...
America’s War on Poverty
Paul Mero, president and CEO, recently wrote an op-ed for the Deseret News about our need to recognize the human dignity of those who are poor. Here are a couple of excerpts: [A]t the heart of...
Conservatives Must Lead the Fight for Welfare Reform
Paul Mero, president and CEO of Next Generation Freedom Fund, wrote an op-ed in the Deseret News explaining that trusted conservatives in Utah need to seek to influence debate in providing a new...
Intergenerational Poverty in Utah, 2018
Over the past six years, Utah has made progress addressing intergenerational poverty. The progress is not being made through the establishment of new government programs or significant increases in...
One of every four residents in Utah’s San Juan County lives in poverty
Utah’s San Juan County - dominated by the Navajo reservation - languishes with one of every four residents (25.9 percent) living in poverty. That is 22nd worst among counties in the West. At the...
More Quest for Community
Robert Nisbet, author of the 1953 book The Quest for Community, defined alienation as “the state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible, or fraudulent; beyond real hope or...
Civility and Noblesse Oblige
Civility hardly seems conceivable to many in our day, because they have forgotten the history of political and religious conflict that preceded the American founding and establishment of our...
Conservatives are Wrong to Dismiss Feminism
In the six months since the #MeToo movement began, conservatives have, at times rightly, questioned or criticized some aspects of it. But too often they have wrongly downplayed, ignored, or...
No, the ‘Real Gender Wage Gap’ isn’t 51 Percent
For decades, the term “gender wage gap” has referred to the difference in median earnings between full-time working women and full-time working men. Unfortunately, the term is becoming confused...
Best Practices Guide for Closing the Gender Wage Gap
The Salt Lake Chamber and its affiliated Women’s Leadership Institute urges all businesses to review the contents of this document, identify what specific actions they can take to close the gender...
Utah now has America’s biggest gender wage gap – women earn 70 cents on the dollar compared to men
Women who work full time and year-round in both states on average earned only 70 cents on the dollar in 2016 compared with men, according to a new study using U.S. Census data by the American...
How Utah’s Child Care Shortage Impacts the Gender Wage Gap
When women can't find child care, whether because it's unavailable or unaffordable, some turn to jobs that may pay less but offer greater mothering flexibility, while others leave the workforce...
Possible Civil Rights Violations at Utah Elementary and High Schools
There at least 23 open investigations into alleged civil rights violations — most on the basis of disability, sex or race — in elementary and high schools across seven Utah school districts that...
Utah Legislature Leaves Thousands of Workers without Workplace Protections
Workers at companies with less than 15 employees still have no legal recourse for biases against their gender, race, sex, religion, pregnancy or other protected classes. A bill that would have...
Addiction is not a Moral Failure
Latent or explicit, the view of addiction as a moral failure is doing real damage. The stigma against addiction is “the single biggest reason America is failing in its response to the opioid...
County Plans Overview, 2017
From September 2016 to June 2017, thirteen Utah counties were selected by Utah’s Department of Workforce Services (DWS) to develop local strategic plans to address high rates of intergenerational...
Utah Omnibus Research, 2017
Next Generation Freedom Fund teamed with Heart & Mind Strategies to survey Utahns about their understanding of poverty in Utah, especially intergenerational poverty. Findings reveal that Utahns...
Report: Intergenerational Poverty in Utah, 2017
Under the leadership of Utah’s Lieutenant Governor, leaders in 11 rural counties and two urban counties were engaged to develop local plans that align with the Commission’s goals to reduce IGP among...
The American Dream is Alive in Utah
There is still one part of the country where the poor can become successful: Salt Lake City. If you’re in the bottom 20 percent of incomes and living in Charlotte, North Carolina, you only have a 4...
Failure: The City of Draper, Utah
After more than three hours of listening to over 700 Draper residents protest his proposal to volunteer two Draper sites for a new homeless resource center, Mayor Troy Walker rescinded his offer...
The Dignity Gap
For some Americans, dignity isn’t a right so much as it’s a commodity. Or at least it is according to Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute, who makes this argument in...
Intergenerational Trauma Among American Indians
Trauma has been garnering more and more attention over the past few years, with the rampant climb of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the understanding of what can cause it. Intergenerational...
