What does it take? Oklahoma Self-Sufficiency Standard calculates what families need to get by

How much does an Oklahoma family have to earn to meet its basic needs? What are the major costs of a family budget, and how do these vary for different family types and in different parts of the state? How… Read more [More...]

2009 Oklahoma Self-Sufficiency Standard

The Self-Sufficiency Standard for Oklahoma 2009 calculates the amount of income Oklahoma families need to meet their basic needs. The report was prepared by Dr. Diana Pearce of the Cenetr for Women’s Welfare at the University of Washington for the… Read more [More...]

More Than Just Getting By: The importance of assets for promoting opportunity for Oklahomans

OK Policy’s issue brief, More Than Just Getting By, serves as an overview of asset building in Oklahoma. A major segment of the population has few, if any, assets, despite the fact that they are a key element in developing… Read more [More...]

Saved by the net: Food assistance programs help mitigate recession’s impact

This week we released the November issue of Numbers You Need (PDF), our monthly look at key data on the state’s economy  and budget. As we reported in the bulletin, one of the clearest signs of the depth and length… Read more [More...]

Snapshot of Oklahomans in poverty

Oklahoma’s Poverty Profile: 2008 is a new two-page fact sheet of graphs and analysis that spotlights some of the salient characteristics of the population living in poverty in our state. The information is all assembled from the U.S. Census Bureau’s… Read more [More...]

College savings plan–time to get serious

We’ve recently joined with CFED, a national organization dedicated to expanding economic opportunity, and the Oklahoma Asset Building Coalition, in releasing the 2009-2010 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard. Our earlier post summarized the Oklahoma results, as did several media reports. One… Read more [More...]

Nearing exhaustion: As recession drags on, long-term unemployed risk losing benefits

Our October edition of Numbers You Need is now out, providing a snapshot of economic and budget trends in Oklahoma through monthly data on jobs, inflation, public benefits, and state revenues, as well as the most recent quarterly data on… Read more [More...]

The racial wealth gap

It is widely known that minorities in the United States earn considerably less than Whites – according to the most recent Census Bureau data, the median income for a White household in 2008 was 34.5 percent greater than for a… Read more [More...]

Guest Blog: Will Oklahoma be first to discriminate against military spouses in divorces?

From time to time, we will use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This submission is from Karin Brandenburg, an Oklahoman who works in… Read more [More...]

Poverty by any other name would smell just as bitter

Shakespeare wrote: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Maybe Juliet had only Romeo in her mind when she fictitiously spoke these words, but I can’t help but think… Read more [More...]