Olivia is struggling to find work—and she needs it. She’s a low-income mom with two kids. As she seeks a path forward, she faces unfair barriers to entering professions where she thinks she could contribute. Worse still, she’s actively discouraged from progressing professionally by structural barriers in our welfare system. If we remove these anti-opportunity barriers, does that make opportunity real for Olivia?
No. In math, multiplying (or dividing) two negatives creates a positive. That doesn’t carry over to public policy, though. While it’s critically necessary to remove barriers to opportunity, being anti-anti-opportunity isn’t enough. That is, it isn’t enough to oppose policies and conditions that are harmful to opportunity.
To achieve what I call “opportunity abundance,” opportunity has to be real, attainable, and equal, particularly for low-income Americans. Only by being “pro-opportunity” can we make the American Dream a reality for more people, ensuring they have a chance to thrive today and tomorrow.
Barriers to opportunity come in many forms. Sometimes, though certainly not always, they are policy decisions. Consider two examples of anti-opportunity policies related to work: occupational licensing and benefit cliffs. They’re harmful in their own right, and make it harder to follow the success sequence.
The “success sequence” is rightly celebrated as a pathway out of poverty and into prosperity. When someone finishes high school, then gets a full-time job, then gets married before having kids, their poverty rate is about 2%. We know that work is crucial to economic and social mobility, as well as happiness and thriving. We need to celebrate it. Instead, we create barriers to it, and even penalize it.
An occupational license is a government-issued permission slip to work in a sector. In some cases, like medicine, that’s understandable. We don’t want unlicensed surgeons. In many others, like cosmetology and barbering, these barriers are often too burdensome, or altogether unnecessary. For example, Illinois requires licenses to work in cemetery customer service, to be a community association manager, and even to become a hotwalker.
Occupational licensing burdens fall disproportionately on poor people and minorities, which makes these burdens inequitable, by definition. These burdens should be eliminated or reduced wherever possible, which includes the vast majority of cases.
A “benefit cliff” occurs when an earnings increase—sometimes as little as an additional $1 per hour—results in the abrupt, disproportionate loss of hundreds or thousands of dollars in household resources. Benefit cliffs make it economically rational and psychologically understandable for poor people to reject opportunity. These cliffs penalize professional growth and create enormous disincentives to work, causing people to refuse to climb the economic ladder. They unfairly trap people in poverty and turn the American Dream into a mirage.
The best way to remove this anti-opportunity barrier is through federal reform. With other senior researchers, I helped outline what this reform should look like in a report entitled “Stranded by the Safety Net: How to Fix the Benefit Cliff Problem.”
Since federal action seems anything but imminent, there are also many things states can do to solve benefit cliffs, as I outline in a new report.
The question becomes: Would it be enough for Olivia and others to remove these and other barriers to opportunity? If we get out of the way of Olivia pursuing her professional interests, working, creating value for others, etc.—if, in other words, we’re anti-anti-opportunity—will that make us pro-opportunity?
Unfortunately, the answer is “no.” Being pro-opportunity requires more.
Simply removing an occupational licensing requirement does not mean people can acquire the requisite skills to successfully work in a field. Simply eliminating benefit cliffs does not mean people have the skills necessary to climb on and up the economic ladder. Even work requirements for able-bodied adults without small children as a condition for receiving welfare benefits do not mean they have the skills necessary to find a job that will allow them to provide for themself and their family.
How would a pro-opportunity approach differ from an anti-anti-opportunity approach with regard to work? It would ensure people have access to education and training to thrive through work today and tomorrow.
This starts with a proven, nimble career-first education system. In an earlier report, “Beyond Degrees: Empowering Illinoisans through Career-First Education,” my co-author and I explored how our degree-first education system is failing students. That’s especially true of low-income students who are stuck in bad schools and lack access to opportunity outside of those schools. There’s a better alternative.
A “career-first” education would put the acquisition of hard and soft skills front and center. Students would actually be prepared to get a full-time job that pays well after school, either because they started their career, or they went to college as a next step in beginning that career.
It would be nimble, mindful of how quickly the future of work is evolving professions and entire industries. We cannot prepare someone to thrive today, only to be unprepared to help them continue to thrive as the job market evolves. If someone’s job truly goes away due, say, to automation, we need to have proven training opportunities in place for them to reenter the workforce.
It would be proven, too: Does the training students actually help them get and hold jobs?
The gold standard for career training is apprenticeships. They’re the proven pathway to a career. And they’re not only for blue-collar jobs, either. Jobs in finance, technology, health care, and many white-collar sectors are apprenticeable.
To be pro-opportunity with regards to work, we need to start by thinking about how we create educational and training systems that prepare people for work. We then need to look at anti-opportunity barriers to them working, and systematically remove them. Then, as people try to find their path, they need individualized guidance to ensure they’re truly empowered to work hard and realize their version of the American Dream.