Resources for an Inclusive and Equitable Economic Recovery

As we continue to feel the full effects from COVID-19 to people, places, and businesses, recovery will be a long journey.   We will continue to share resources and thoughts that may be of interest and value, and here are a few for this week: 

• Leading a just and equitable economic recovery requires new and improved leaders and capabilities.  An under-the-radar weekly newsletter I very much enjoy receiving is from the folks at Reboot, and this edition on the absolute necessity for leadership to be inclusive is well worth a read.  As Ali Schultz writes, 

“Learning the ways of inclusion is part and parcel of becoming an authentic leader. You can’t have one without the other. Leadership without inclusion is oppression under a different guise. Inclusive leadership is how privilege can be used for good, and how power dynamics can shift from oppressive to free and equal.”

• Kennedy Smith, with The Institute for Local Self Reliance, developed this great resource on ways that local governments can support their small businesses during the continued pandemic and this period of economic uncertainty.  Kennedy is a nationally known expert on commercial district and downtown revitalization and worked for a number of years here in Virginia.

• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offers guidance and principles to help states, communities, and organizations to center health equity in pandemic response and economic recovery.

“Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, safe environments, and health care.”

• Concerns for health equity are crucial.  Mary Van Beusekom with The University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy writes about recent studies finding that predominantly non-white communities had nearly three times the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths as white neighborhoods. In poorer counties with predominantly non-white residents, the infection rate was nearly eight times that of mostly-white counties, and the death rate was more than nine times greater.

• Equity concerns are just as crucial in terms of economic recovery.   Census data, as compiled by the Center for American Progress, illustrates that households of color are far more likely to experience negative income shocks in the wake of the coronavirus,

• A more equitable economic recovery necessitates the creation of more pathways for upward economic mobility.   The Urban Institute’s Mobility Metrics Working Group reviewed and assessed possible factors that influenced mobility from poverty over the course of a person’s life.  The researchers analyzed the factors and selected a set of evidence-based metrics that do influence mobility.  The factors can “help communities establish priorities, set targets, catalyze action, change policies and practices, and monitor their progress.”

• The Economic Development Administration developed www.restoreyoureconomy.org to provide resources and best practice information for public and private stakeholders who are seeking to rebuild their local economies after an economic disruption, whether a natural disaster or man-made crisis.

• Oscar Perry Abello, writing for Next City, suggests that managing wealth differently can help advance a more equitable recovery.  

• The Aspen Institute has compiled a list of COVID-19 response resources that might be particularly useful for rural communities.