Keith Bowers, FASLA, is a landscape architect, restoration ecologist, and founder of Biohabitats. He is co-chair of the ASLA Biodiversity and Climate Action Committee Subcommittee on Biodiversity and Carbon Drawdown.

You have said the dangers of the biodiversity crisis are equal to or even greater than the climate crisis. Can you elaborate?

If we stop emitting carbon dioxide, climate change could be stopped or reversed. But if we lose species, they’re gone forever.

We’ve seen species extinction and the degradation of ecosystems proceed at a rapid pace. We’re losing species at a rate of about anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times faster than the background rate, based on previous extinctions. Addressing climate change will remove one threat to biodiversity, but it won’t stop its decline. If we fix climate change tomorrow, we still are dealing with a massive degradation of nature and biodiversity.

Nature is infinitely more complex than a molecule of carbon. We’re coming up with ways to deal with carbon. But nature is more complex, so we’re still learning a great deal.

When we lose ecosystems or genetic diversity, that impacts our ability to survive as a human species, not to mention all the other more-than-human species that inhabit the planet with us. The food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the medicines we use are all directly related to nature. If we lose nature, we’re going to severely impact all the things that keep us alive and thriving.

While we look to the sky trying to figure out what to do with climate change, nature is being pulled out right from under us.

Last year, world leaders met at the Convention on Biological Diversity and committed to new global biodiversity targets, including protecting and restoring 30% of terrestrial, coastal, and ocean ecosystems by 2030. Of the 23 targets, which are you focused on?

Conserving and managing at least 30 percent of the world’s lands, inland waters, and coastal areas is something we’re directly involved in and we take to heart every day.

The targets include four overarching goals, including: the “integrity and connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, sustainably increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050.” This is where landscape architects can have the greatest impact. We’re all involved and can help make sure this goal is met.

The 23 targets can be put into four categories. One is on-the-ground action targets. The other is policy initiatives. The third is financing and capacity building. The fourth deals with inclusion and equity.

At Biohabitats, we’re really focused on the on-the-ground actions. That’s conserving habitat and species. It’s restoring ecosystems, managing invasive species, and adapting and mitigating to climate change. We deal with these on all our projects. But you can’t think of any of these global targets independently. They’re all connected to one another.

Our work also falls into the inclusion and equity batch of targets. We think about Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and underserved communities and make sure these communities not only participate in the work we do, but have the ability to make decisions, deciding what’s going to happen in their neighborhood, communities, and on their land with their consent.

How can landscape architects better design projects to achieve the 2030 biodiversity targets? What are the top three actions landscape architects can take to increase biodiversity in their work?

First, protect and conserve the biodiversity within your sphere of influence.

Second, restore biodiversity, which can take many forms. Look at how the site is connected to the rest of the landscape from a landscape ecology perspective. Seek to understand how nutrients cycle and flow through the site, how water interacts with the site, how species move across the site or inhabit the site, and how that’s all connected to the regional landscape. It’s really hard to increase biodiversity on a site if we don’t understand these connections and relationships.

Third, once you have an idea of what you’re going to protect and what you’re going to conserve, then develop ideas and ways to restore and enhance biodiversity. This can take the form of many different strategies and measures.

Landscape architects have a tremendous influence and impact on the way biodiversity is protected, conserved, restored, and enhanced.

Biodiverse landscapes provide a range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration. But with growing climate impacts like wildfires, landscapes can also become major sources of emissions. Biohabitats analyzed the carbon storage capacity of a fire-prone landscape for the City of Boulder, Colorado. What did you learn?

We were commissioned by the City of Boulder to look at whether their annual carbon sequestration in their open spaces and mountain parks would help them offset the carbon they emit as a city. We inventoried the carbon stock, and annual flux of their landscape, and projected what the loss may be based on fire or another land disturbances, and what the landscape’s potential is in terms of sequestering carbon under a changing climate and with the application of nature-based solutions.

We looked at over 36,000 acres. We found these lands had a really large existing carbon stock. 2.8 million cubic tons of carbon were already being stored in those landscapes.

The grasslands had the greatest existing carbon storage, mostly in their soils. Wetlands actually had a greater carbon density per acre, but they cover relatively small areas. While the forest and grasslands can store significant amount of carbon in the landscape, our modeling of fire scenarios found that they were also a potential source of carbon emissions due to the risk of loss under certain scenarios.

We found that nature-based solutions could help draw down carbon and reduce loss. For example, prescribed burning can be used to improve landscape resilience. Because when fire-evolved ecosystems aren’t burned, the fires burn with more intensity and typically burn the soil as well. With frequent fires, you get less intensity, and they produce less carbon emissions.

This fell in line with other studies around the world. It also emphasized why developing or tilling greenfields is destructive in terms of carbon emissions. Protecting and conserving wild lands and parks is really important in reducing carbon emissions.

To the untrained eye, some of your firm’s projects look natural, like nothing has been done. Your beautiful project at Teaneck Creek Park in Bergen County, New Jersey, restored 46 acres of freshwater wetlands. Big Marsh Park on the South Side of Chicago restored a dumping ground and treats wastewater, but looks pristine. Is that one of your measures of design success — for your work to read as nature?

A quick story: We worked on a stream and riparian restoration project in Columbia, Maryland, which sits between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in the 1990s. A reporter contacted us and said “I want to go out and take some pictures of the site you restored.” We told them where it was, and they went out. We got a call the next day saying they couldn’t find it. They were standing exactly at the point where we did the restoration.

With a lot of our restoration work, we hope it blends back into the existing landscape. But it goes a little bit deeper than that. We think about how to restore ecological processes, like food webs, hydrologic or nutrient cycles, ecological succession or disturbance regimes like fire. That’s what we focus on, not necessarily what the landscape’s going to look like.

It’s really place dependent. Every place has these processes, but they operate at different levels, scales, complexities, and relationships. A long grass prairie, an eastern deciduous forest, or a Gulf Coast tidal wetland are different. We’re trying to first understand those processes and design to protect, restore, enhance them.

If we start doing that, then that manifests itself into what the landscape is going to look like; what the plant community is going to look like; how water flows through, over, under the site; how species interact with the landscape; and how the site evolves. We’re trying to mimic ecosystem processes within landscapes that are relatively stable and intact. Much like architects or landscape architects use precedent images, we use reference landscapes.

For us, there’s an inherent beauty in natural systems. We’re trying to create the building blocks that allow natural systems to regenerate. For a landscape to be sustainable, robust ecological processes need to be in place. Otherwise, the system is going to fall apart.

We also work in highly disturbed landscapes that are disconnected from natural processes — for example, brownfields or high-density urban areas. While our goal is to restore the full suite of ecosystem processes and functions, many times we are quite limited in what we can do.

Scientists are calling these novel ecosystems. It’s the idea that we can use these reference landscapes as an analog but knowing that we’ll never be able to replicate many of the ecological processes that sustain these landscapes. What can we restore that has a semblance of ecological integrity and provides value to the life of that landscape? That’s where we begin.

It goes back to our tagline: “We’re in the business of restoring the future, not the past.” We can’t go back to the past because there have been so many changes to our landscapes, ecosystems, and planetary systems. We need to look forward.

Your firm works with the Army Corps of Engineers, which has a large contingent of landscape architects. What do you think that the Corps needs to do to fully realize its vision of Engineering with Nature?

We’ve been working with the Corps of Engineers for almost 30 years. I will give a shout-out to Dr. Todd Bridges, who, with his cohort of researchers and other practitioners, developed the Engineering with Nature initiative while he was at the U.S Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). Todd is now with a team of researchers at the University of Georgia, working in collaboration with the Corps and others to advance the idea of nature-based solutions for infrastructure projects all over the world.

In 2022, the ERDC contributed to The White House roadmap for accelerating nature-based solutions. This roadmap lays out five recommendations that the Corps and all federal agencies need to do. For the Corps, this will require Congress to change Corps policies, reallocate funding, and shift priorities. It’s not that the Corps is necessarily trying to make things more difficult or put-up roadblocks. Literally, they can’t do many of the changes we want to see or do until Congress gives them authorization. It’s up to all of us to advocate to our representatives in Congress to make these changes happen.

For example, the Corps has specific guidelines on how they evaluate project alternatives, which give overwhelming preference to damage reduction and business loss reductions. These are worthy benefits, but for the most part they completely ignore ecological and social benefits. It’s hard for the Corps to justify the use of nature-based solutions if the benefit is not quantifiable.

But just this past February, the Corps released a final rule to change that policy. If this rule is adopted, the Corps will be able to develop project alternatives that maximize environmental and public benefits. This allows both quantitative and qualitative data to be used in determining the highest benefit to lowest cost ratio. This alone will accelerate the application of nature-based solutions and aesthetic and context sensitive design considerations in infrastructure projects throughout the country. This could be a game-changer.

Your firm also integrates nature into dense urban environments, like a green street in downtown D.C. How do these small projects provide opportunities to increase biodiversity?

We’ve been working with the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District in D.C. for several years. We’re designing and retrofitting bioretention facilities into the streetscape. Obviously, as landscape architects, we are excited to see bioretention as a stormwater quantity and quality management system being designed and installed all over the world.

The idea of bioretention was developed by Larry Coffman in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a suburb just outside of Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s. Biohabitats was fortunate enough to have worked with Larry on that research, the design specifications, and proof of concept for the very first bioretention facilities in the world. So, this is sort of the homecoming for us.

There are many benefits. Bioretention systems improve water quality by removing pollutants through soil microbes and uptake by plants. They infiltrate stormwater into the ground and help replenish groundwater. They reduce runoff off from impervious surfaces, particularly when designed with trees. They help reduce the heat island effect. And they also provide micro-habitats for pollinator species and migratory song birds, among other species. Bioretention facilities are wonderful ways to benefit nature and biodiversity in urban areas.

Lastly, in 2023, Biohabitats transitioned ownership from being a privately-held company to a perpetual purpose trust, much like Patagonia did. How did you decide this was the best way to achieve your long-term goals for your team and the planet?

Yes, on Earth Day, 2023, Biohabitats sold all its shares to the Biohabitats Purpose Trust (BPT), which is a non-charitable trust with the explicit purpose of “restoring nature, protecting and conserving biodiversity and inspiring love for wild places.”

I began looking a different options for ownership transition about seven years ago. I looked at selling Biohabitats to our team members, another firm, or private equity. I also considered an employee stock ownership plan, a co-op, and a variety of hybrid business models. Eventually, I came across the concept of a perpetual purpose trust through a business group I belonged to. The idea of locking in our purpose and mission in perpetuity really appealed to me and our team.

With the BPT, Biohabitats’ purpose, mission, and values are locked in for the next 100 plus years and cannot be bought or sold. Under the BPT, Biohabitats operates as a for-profit company trading as C-corporation, with a Benefit Corporation overlay. We are also B-Corps certified, a JUST company, and 1% for the Planet Member. The profits Biohabitats earns are no longer extracted by shareholders, because the BPT is the only shareholder and doesn’t need profits. Instead, profits get reinvested back into our team members, stakeholders, and nature.

The BPT is governed by a board of trustees within the Trust Earth Stewardship Committee, which is responsible for making sure that Biohabitats is meeting its purpose and objectives. There are five seats on this stewardship committee, and we have designated and legally codified one seat for nature. Nature, represented by a nature guardian, has a seat at the table and more importantly, agency in making sure that Biohabitats is meeting its purpose and objectives. We believe it’s the first time in the U.S. that nature has been legally assigned as trustee. For the wild!

At first glance, it might seem difficult to come up with many similarities between Taipei and its Sister City, Atlanta.

The Taiwanese capital has five metro lines that moves millions of people a day. Metro Atlanta’s daily rider numbers just hit 200,000. Despite carrying an endless stream of cars and motorcycles each day, Taipei’s roads are immaculate. Atlanta’s are seemingly always halfway sinking.

But what connects the sprawling metro area of Taiwan with its Atlanta counterpart is a shared commitment to Smart City initiatives. The Metro Atlanta area has become a hub for Smart City innovation, from Peachtree Corners’ Smart City living laboratory to new innovations coming out of Georgia Tech. Taipei and its surrounding municipalities have long been Smart City leaders and technology “solutions providers” to other places, said National Development Council’s Minister Ming-Hshin Kung during the opening ceremonies of the Smart City Summit & Expo last month.

“Taiwan has become a very important partner to cities around the world” when it comes to developing the infrastructure and technology associated with Smart City projects, added Paul Peng of the Taipei Computer Association. Taiwan is home to the world’s largest logic semiconductor companies and companies that are driving telecommunications innovation. It is also the birthplace of a growing number of Smart City startups, thanks to organizations like Startup Terrace and the country’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.

For the last eleven years, the international Smart City community has gathered in Taipei to see up-and-coming Smart City technology initiatives in action. The goal is to showcase Taiwanese innovations and learn from other Smart City leaders about what technologies are driving cities forward.

More than 500 leaders from 112 cities around the world took part in the Summit this year. Among them was a delegation of technologists and politicians from the State of Georgia. The delegation, which included Mayors from Woodstock and Warner Robins, took the opportunity to meet with companies and city leaders to further grow their Smart City initiatives at home.

So, What Makes A Smart City?

At its core Smart Cities, or Intelligent Cities, focus on using data to help improve the quality of life for its constituents. But as highlighted throughout the Summit, it is really about creating an Urban System Framework where governance, design, economics, and infrastructure all help build up a city’s culture and society.

Cutting-edge Smart City programs were on full display at the Summit, with companies and municipalities showcasing what they are building in E-Governance, IoT (Internet of Things), Smart Energy, IoT Surveillance, and Smart Healthcare. The Georgia Delegation specifically got to spend time getting acquainted with each city counterparts and local companies that are building city-focused technologies. That included talking with city officials at places like Taoyuan, Taiwan who are using new AI technology to monitor local water pollution, companies like Foxconn developing a “CityGPT” to synchronize city data into one space, or startups working on new energy solution opportunities.

The Summit also highlighted the fact that Smart Cities need to focus on public-private partnerships, equitability, and leveraging human expertise in order to create thriving spaces.

The Summit was also a place for international representatives to exchange ideas. The Georgia Delegation, which included Mayor’s from Metro Atlanta cities Warner Robins and Woodstock, got to share on stage how they are leveraging data to build safer, more resilient cities. Their Smart City efforts were also celebrated, as both cities made the  Smart21 list, a global award from the Intelligent Community Forum.

From Expo Floor To The Real World

But seeing Smart City examples on the floor of an Expo is one thing. It is something else to be able to experience how it impacts lives on a daily basis.

One representative from the Georgia Delegation certainly experienced that one night while grabbing dinner near the crowded Zhongxiao Fuxing Station. After taking a cab ride back to her hotel room, Global Atlanta’s Michal Jensby realized she couldn’t find her phone.

“When you lose your phone in the US and it’s been over half an hour, you know you’ll never see it again.You just start planning for how you’ll get another phone as soon as possible. I’m already thinking about how in the world I’m going to purchase a new phone and connect it to my US-provider account while in Taipei or if I’m going to have to go the whole business trip without a phone,” she told Hypepotamus.

Upon the suggestion of her hotel’s concierge, Jensby and her friend went down to the local police station. They were greeted by an officer who ushered them over to a computer monitor in the lobby of the building that to Jensby’s surprise, the screen showed every CCTV camera on every major intersection of Taipei, with a Google Map-style user experience allowing the police officer to Zoom in on different cars. Despite not have the exact license plate for the cab — and having very little identifying information other than a general time in which the cab left the restaurant and arrived at the hotel — they were able to track down the phone in less than twenty minutes.

“[It was] starting to feel like I’ve honestly become a secret agent. The amount of transparency we have into this situation baffles me, and the whole time we’re searching footage, I’m saying to my friend — “Isn’t it crazy that we’re watching this? Isn’t it crazy that they can sit here for half an hour and help me find my phone because no one had their car stolen, no one got shot, no one broke into a building nearby?” Jensby added.

“This whole ordeal happened the first night I landed and it affected the way I thought about Smart Cities and my perspective on the conference. I still wonder what everyday Taiwanese citizens feel or even know about the amount of surveillance and data collection happening, but I saw the efficiency and value of having this technology available when I needed it.”

“Georgia’s leadership has been pro-business, so you see a lot of companies relocating here. I think that’s certainly one driver,” said the executive.

Chris Clark, CEO and President of the Chamber, added that respondents’ top concerns were shown to be staff recruitment and retention.

Read More at WABE.

The U.S. made remarkable strides in reducing poverty in recent decades, but one group was left behind — working-age adults who aren't raising children.

Why it matters: While key tax breaks and support programs lift a significant percentage of children, parents and older Americans out of poverty, they barely move the needle on this group, finds a striking series of papers from the Hamilton Project at Brookings released Wednesday.

State of play: One out of every two people in the U.S. who live in deep poverty — 50% below the poverty line — is a member of this population.

• More than 70% of the homeless population falls into this group, which totals about 14 million adults aged 18-64, says Robert Greenstein, the founder of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of one of the papers.

How it works: In his research, Greenstein compares poor working-age adults who aren't raising kids or collecting disability benefits to other groups of poor people, looking at how government programs — and federal taxes — either pulled people out of, or pushed them into, poverty.

• He compared data from the Census and the Department of Health and Human Services from 1970 to 2017, the most recent year with complete data not affected by pandemic-era irregularities.

By the numbers: Back in 1970, federal income tax and payroll taxes pushed more children and working parents below the poverty line than government social programs lifted out — producing a 4% net increase in the poverty rate among children, and an 11% increase among working parents.

• By 2017, that had radically changed: 38% of otherwise poor parents and 44% of children were pulled out of poverty by tax policies and benefits.
• Meanwhile: Only 8% of otherwise poor working-age adults without children were pulled out of poverty by government programs in 2017 — an increase of just 1 percentage point compared with 1970.

The difference makers were new things like the child tax credit, lower income taxes, and, especially, the earned income tax credit, a benefit for lower-income workers meant to stop taxing people into poverty and encourage them to work.

• Single folks, without dependents, obviously don't get a child tax credit —and they also don't see much benefit from the EITC.
• In 2020, the average annual EITC benefit for this group was $295, compared to $3,099 for families, according to CBPP data.
• Stunning stat: About 5 million adults, who aren't raising kids at home, are taxed into poverty or pushed deeper into it, the paper finds

Zoom out: The U.S. appears to be the exception here. Other developed countries do more, per a different paper out Wednesday.

• For starters, these countries have a higher minimum wage. The paper compared poverty reduction efforts in the U.S. to other countries including Canada, the U.K., and the Netherlands, and found that the U.S. is the only one where working full-time at minimum wage doesn't lift you above the poverty line.

Between the lines: There's a strong notion of self-reliance and "bootstrapping" in the U.S. — a tendency to blame poverty on individuals instead of structural circumstances.

• Plenty of policymakers believe that if you're able-bodied and theoretically can get a job, you don't need help and should fend for yourself.

The big picture: About half of this population — poor adults without disabilities or kids — is in the labor force, according to research in a third paper co-authored by Lauren Bauer, a fellow at Brookings.

• Many are dealing with the inconsistent scheduling that's typical in low-wage jobs, possibly not getting enough hours from their employer to get by.
• Those who aren't working may not be "able-bodied," but instead dealing with health issues that fall out of the purview of government-determined disability insurance.
• They may be adults just out of the foster care system who've had little help getting on their feet, or adults caring for the elderly or those with disabilities. And though none are "custodial" parents, this is a population that does include fathers and mothers of young children.

The bottom line: The U.S. safety net leaves out a lot of people who need help.

In previous blog posts, we have explored the growth of work from home (WFH) in the Atlanta region. [1] First, we saw a slow, steady rise over the 2010s. A large spike due to pandemic onset followed. Finally, there was a small decline in 2022 to what may well be the “new normal” for WFH.

How does Atlanta compare to other metros? To address this question, we return to data from the American Community Survey (ACS), specifically the 1-year estimates for metropolitan core-based statistical areas.[2]

Figure 1 shows the change over time (2010-22) in the percent working from home for the twenty most populous CBSAs.[3] It shows that the general pattern observed for Atlanta is almost universal. The lone exception is found in Tampa, where WFH share held steady between 2021 and 2022 rather than declining.

Figure 1: Trends in Shares Working From Home, Twenty Largest Metros, 2010-2022 (Source: ACS)

Figure 2 below focuses on the change in percent WFH between 2019 and 2022 for these same twenty metro areas. We see that Atlanta is in the middle of the pack, ranked #11 of 20, with an increase of 12.2 percentage points in WFH share from 2019 to 2022.

Figure 2: Percentage Point Change in Shares WFH, Twenty Largest Metros, 2019-2022 (Source: ACS)

The limited “growth” in share for Atlanta is due in part to the fact that Atlanta started at a higher percentage of WFH than many of its peers. Figure 3 that follows shows that, at 21%, Atlanta is ranked #7 among the twenty largest metros, as of 2022, in terms of working from home…as opposed to 11th in change 2019 to 2022.

Figure 3: Shares Working from Home, Twenty Largest Metros, 2022 (Source: ACS)

What accounts for the variation between metro areas in terms of WFH? Let’s consider two indicators: one that measures motive, and the other opportunity.

The pain of commuting can provide a powerful motive for working from home. Figure 4 below shows the relationship between the mean travel time for commuters and the percent working from home for all metropolitan CBSAs nationwide. The trend line has a slope of .41.[4] With a mean travel time to work of 30.9 minutes and 21% WFH rate, Atlanta falls somewhat above the trend line. However, this relationship is not particularly strong, in that the points in this scatterplot do not hew closely to that prediction line (r=.29).

Figure 4: Metro Shares Working from Home Compared to Mean Travel Time, 2022 (Source: ACS)

But we must recognize that not all jobs are equal in their opportunity for WFH, as some jobs must be performed in person. Figure 5 shows the relationship between the percent of workers in management, business, science, and arts occupations (arguably the most white-collar, or “office-using” among the occupation categories) and percent WFH.[6] The dots in this plot cluster tighter to the trend line than the previous graph, indicating a much stronger relationship (r=.74) Again, the trend line is positive, with a slope of .54.[5] The Atlanta CBSA again lies a bit above the prediction line, with 45.7% of its workers in these white-collar occupations, and 21% WFH.

Figure 5: Metro Shares Working from Home Compared to Shares of “Office-Using” Occupations, 2022 (Source: ACS)

So, while Atlanta exhibits a WFH rate a bit higher than we might expect based on these two criteria, it is not a crazy outlier either.[7]

Footnotes:

[1]https://33n.atlantaregional.com/data-diversions/did-we-return-to-the-office-in-2022 and https://33n.atlantaregional.com/data-diversions/whos-working-from-home

[2] Core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) are delineated by the Office of Management and Budget. They consist of groups of counties with a “high degree of economic and social integration” (think commuting patterns) with one or more core urban areas. The most recent iteration of Atlanta’s CBSA, as of July 2023, is officially called the “Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA” Metropolitan Statistical Area and recognizes six principal core cities: Alpharetta, Atlanta, Dunwoody, Marietta, Roswell, and Sandy Springs. CBSAs come in two flavors: metropolitan CBSAs have at least one core city with population over 50,000, while micropolitan CBSAs have at least one core city of population at least 10,000, but none reaching 50,000 population. There are currently 393 metropolitan CBSAs and 542 micropolitan CBSAs in the United States. For more information about CBSAs, see https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/metro-micro/about.html.

[3] We’re #6! In terms of population, per the Census Bureau’s most recent (2023 Vintage) estimates, that is.

[4] This means that that for each extra minute of travel time that commuters face, we can expect to see on average an additional 0.41 percentage point of work from home (WFH) share.

[5] Thus, for each additional percent of workers in these white-collar occupations, we would expect to see 0.54 percent additional WFH overall.

[6] ACS table C08124 reports means of transportation to work for six occupation categories: management, business, science, and arts occupations; service occupations; sales and office occupations; natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; production, transportation, and material moving occupations; and military specific occupations.

[7] That outlier in the far northeast corner of Figure 5? Boulder, Colorado.

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One of the most important skills needed to achieve financial security is understanding the fundamentals of following a budget, reducing debt and saving for retirement. Yet, despite being the world’s largest economy, the U.S. doesn’t even crack the top 10 list for financial literacy worldwide.

That lack of education can be particularly harmful for middle-income Americans, who are disproportionately impacted by factors such as high inflation and may find it more difficult to recover from down periods in the economy.  

That’s why it’s particularly noteworthy that Primerica’s Q1 2024 Financial Security Monitor™ (FSM™) survey found that 66% of middle-income Americans believe the financial education they received in school failed to adequately prepare them to manage their personal finances as adults. Specifically, respondents said they did not learn the necessary skills for a number of tasks, including doing taxes (71%), paying back student loans (67%), taking out and paying back loans (64%) or setting a household budget (59%).

The survey found a notable discrepancy among age groups as the youngest age brackets expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction with their financial education, with 73% of those ages 18-34, 69% of those ages 35-49 and 65% of those ages 50-64 saying they weren’t taught proper financial skills. In addition, 57% of women over the age of 65 felt the same way. Notably, 61% of men over the age of 65 said school did adequately prepare them, representing the only demographic where a majority felt positively about their financial education.

“We are seeing a clear lack of confidence among middle-income Americans who believe their education failed to prepare them to manage their personal finances, with an overwhelming majority of young people feeling left behind,” said Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica. “These are gaps we have to recognize and address as people plan their financial futures and navigate a fluctuating economic environment that, in recent years, has left middle-income Americans feeling incredibly uncertain about their financial situations.”

Luckily, there are many steps middle-income families can take to shore up their financial future, such as educating themselves on key financial principles, practicing “loud budgeting” to prioritize healthy spending habits, cutting out frivolous spending and shopping splurges or simply starting a monthly budget.

No matter your income, age or current financial situation, taking such steps can help bolster your financial education and figure out the best route to financial success. And, as always, whether coming up with a financial game plan feels daunting or you just want to make sure you’re on the right track, reaching out to a financial professional may help ease your mind and give you the confidence you need to succeed.

This is sponsored content.

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