Environmental Stewardship
More than 44 million working households—representing more than 90 million people across the United States—struggle to pay their bills each month. Nearly four in 10 households can’t withstand an unexpected monthly expense greater than $400. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and compounded this fragility in the financial well-being of so many American families. Even before the mass layoffs in early 2020, more than 28 million Americans lacked health insurance.
Unforeseen expenses—a home or auto repair, an emergency hospital visit—can so easily become insurmountable obstacles and have cascading effects on a family’s ability to secure or maintain housing, childcare, food, transportation, and healthcare. This is the picture of economic insecurity in the United States.