In an April 2009 speech at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama said:
We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity: a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.
Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment (SEED) is a policy, practice, research, communication, and market development initiative designed to test the efficacy of and inform policy for a national system of savings and asset-building accounts for children and youth. SEED is implementing and studying inclusive saving in the form of Child Development Accounts (CDAs), established as early as birth and ideally lasting across the full life course for all Americans.
SEED is demonstrating a strategy for saving and investing, with the long-term aim of fostering greater capability, security, and well-being for all American families. We believe that a system of universal savings such as the one demonstrated in SEED would shift the economy away from an overreliance on credit. The goal would be to achieve a little less debt, a little more savings. In this period of economic adjustment and transition, SEED may help to inform and achieve President Obama’s call for a “new foundation for growth and prosperity” for the “save and invest” economy. In that spirit, we offer the experience, data, and insights in this report.
This summary report on SEED is based on CDA experience with over 1,171 children and their families in 12 states and communities, as well as related state and federal policy, market development, and communications. Extensive, multi-method research has been conducted as part of SEED. The research ranges from in-depth interviews with a group of youth participants in a local SEED program to a large, statewide experiment with a control group. SEED research results offer insights to inform the design of an inclusive system of CDAs.
Click here to read the entire report.