Public Policy Blog
The latest from Southern Bancorp Community Partners’ Policy Team on issues affecting economic security in our markets and beyond.
Thoughts on Emergency Savings …from the Shoulder of I-40
By James Owen, 2016-2017 Southern Bancorp Fellow For the past fifteen months, I have worked as a policy fellow at Southern Bancorp, learning about smart savings habits and benefits, statistics about individual and family savings, and Southern’s many savings services...
Into the Light: A Survey of Arkansas Borrowers Seven Years after State Supreme Court Bans Usurious Payday Lending Rates
In 2009, the last Arkansas payday loan store closed for business. At the industry’s peak, three years earlier, payday lenders operated 275 stores across the Natural State. Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending (AAAPL - www.stoppaydaypredators.org), a coalition of...
Teaching Public Benefit Recipients How to Fish
How Arkansas can Lessen Reliance on SNAP & TANF and Support Economic Independence by Lifting Asset Limits Read Policy Points 42 here.
Rural Economic Mobility and Wealth Building
Despite the general economic recovery in the United States, income inequality and wealth inequality are expanding. Perhaps more critically, it is becoming more and more difficult for families with lower wealth or income to achieve upward economic mobility. These two...
New CFED data showing state of family economic security in Arkansas
This week, the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) released its annual Assets and Opportunity Scorecard. The Scorecard provides a comprehensive look at Americans’ capacity to accumulate wealth by examining how well residents prosper in the 50 states and...
Banking in Rural America: Insight from a CDFI
As a rural community bank and U.S. Treasury certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), Southern is fully aware of the importance of CDFIs in rural markets throughout the country. In our recent paper, Banking in Rural America: Insight from a CDFI,...