Children’s Savings Account Update

Our friend Karen Harris from the Shriver Center in Illinois has a nice post up at The Shriver Brief detailing some new developments around Children’s Savings Accounts at the state and local level, including Grand Rapids, MI, and Mississippi, and the role that Shriver and CFED have played in some of those efforts.

Here’s Karen on why this is so important:

Mississippi’s version of a CSA program uses its 529 college savings program platform. The State of Mississippi is offering 529 college savings accounts and seeding them with $50 in several early childhood development centers across the city of Jackson, Mississippi. So far 369 three-, four-, and five-year-olds are enrolled. The children will also receive financial education in the classroom, and their parents will be offered training from the FDIC’s Money Smart curriculum to encourage them to invest in their child’s future. This CSA pilot is critical in Mississippi, a state were less than 15% of ninth graders end up continuing and completing college.

It’s good to get these updates, and to add these programs to the list of promising experiments going on around the country, in places like San Francisco and Maine. Of course, we favor a national solution, but efforts like these help the children who are targeted, their families as well as helping build the base of knowledge around CSAs.