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Opportunity in America:  Policy Recommendations

From The State of Opportunity in America Report

The Opportunity Agenda has released The State of Opportunity in America, the first national report to measure how opportunity is faring in the United States. 

American opportunity means that everyone should have a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential.  Ensuring that fair chance requires equal treatment, economic security and mobility, a voice in decisions that affect us, a chance to start over after misfortune or missteps, and a sense of shared responsibility for each other as neighbors and fellow Americans.  The report assesses opportunity along each of these core American values.

The report finds that, despite progress in some areas, opportunity is at risk for all Americans.  The traditional steppingstones to opportunity—a decent job at a living wage, an affordable home, a college education, and access to quality health care—are moving farther out of reach for everyday Americans.  And many groups of Americans are facing multiple barriers to opportunity.

Bold action by our government is needed to expand opportunity for all.  A new national commitment and specific policies can turn negative trends around and make America a true land of opportunity for all.  The report includes the following six recommendations: 

Planning for Opportunity

• Assessing the impact of publicly funded or authorized projects on opportunity by adopting a new policy tool—an Opportunity Impact Statement—that would explain how a given effort, such as a new school, hospital, or highway, would expand or contract opportunity and require public input and participation.
• Promoting opportunity in land-use, zoning, and transportation policies by encouraging development of mixed-income communities and by planning regionally to address inequality among urban, suburban, and rural communities.
• Making expansion of opportunity a condition to government partnerships with private industry by requiring that public contractors pay a living wage tied to families’ actual cost of living, that employers promote diversity and inclusion, and that radio and television airwaves carry programming that serves the public interest and extends to all communities.

Modernizing the Safety Net

• Moving rapidly toward a system of high quality, equitable, and comprehensive health care that covers all Americans’ basic needs.
• Expanding state and federal food assistance programs, such as food stamps and school lunches, to serve all children and adults in need and providing incentives for grocery stores to stock affordable, nutritious foods in low-income urban and rural communities.
• Scaling up pilot programs that help lower-income families build assets and acquire financial skills.

Updating Skills in a Changing America

• Expanding job training programs focused on quality jobs in the new economy and tailored to the differing skills and needs of workers.
• Reducing financial barriers to college by increasing the share of need-based grants over student loans and improving private sector participation through scholarship aid.
• Creating effective and inclusive immigrant integration policies that educate new Americans about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace, political participation, and the naturalization process, while better equipping institutions and communities to incorporate diverse new members.

Renewing America’s Commitment to Human Rights

• Increasing the staffing and resources that federal, state, and local agencies devote to enforcing anti-discrimination laws in voting, employment, housing, education, criminal justice, and other spheres.
• Assisting employers and institutions committed to providing a fair and diverse environment, by promoting model performance evaluation practices, greater cultural fluency, and other tools to counter bias and exclusion.
• Crafting new human rights laws that complement existing civil rights protections by addressing subconscious and institutional biases more effectively; protecting economic and social rights like the right to education; and correcting exclusion based on socioeconomic status and other characteristics not fully covered by current laws.

Prioritizing Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Reentry

• Expanding community policing—a crime prevention strategy that emphasizes community input, collaboration, and tailored responses to crime and disorder.
• Increasing availability of substance abuse treatment, including as an alternative to incarceration. 
• Replacing mandatory minimum sentencing policies with sentencing based on individualized culpability, control, and circumstances.
• Reviewing criminal justice practices to identify and address the ways in which stereotypes and discrimination influence the outcome.
• Restoring voting rights to people who have been incarcerated and removing other barriers to reentry into society.

Strengthening our democracy

• Establishing minimum federal standards for voting equipment and procedures, including straightforward voter registration requirements, nationwide voting hours, and federal guidelines to verify voter identity. 
• Vigorously enforcing the Voting Rights Act and fully implementing the Help America Vote Act, while providing greater assistance to new Americans and others in obtaining and exercising the right to vote.

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