FEATURE
Michael Sherraden: Saving for the Future Can something as simple as owning a savings account lead youth in developing countries toward a better education, economic opportunities, and long-term development? Michael Sherraden thinks this might be so, and he is putting it to the test. Named by TIME Magazine in 2010 as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People, he is engaged in a landmark research experiment that is setting up savings accounts for 2,000 low-income youth in Ghana to study how and why they save and how this impacts their future. And that’s just the beginning. “The goal is to deliver savings services to 170,000 12- to 18-year-olds in Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, and Columbia,” he reports. “Over the next several years, we’ll study the ways kids maintain and add to their savings through earnings or family help, and how financial institutions develop savings products and services to reach them.” Sherraden, MSW ’76, PhD ’79, is founder and director of the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, a leading academic center best known for its research on assetbuilding for low-income individuals and families. YouthSave, funded by the MasterCard Foundation, is one of a number of ambitious global research initiatives in which Sherraden serves as a collaborator and consultant. Another, closer to home, is SEED (Savings for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment), funded by the Ford and Charles Stewart Mott Foundations. In SEED OK, Sherraden and his colleagues are following 1300 Oklahoma children who were given a $1,000 college savings account at birth to see how this asset affects their educational expectations. Their parents, and those in a control group who did not receive money, will be interviewed periodically about their savings beliefs and behaviors. “We anticipate that the savings will influence parents to think more positively about college for their children,” Sherraden explains. “Maybe they will read to their children instead of turning on the television. We will be asking those questions.” The families can add to these accounts, he noted, and the deposits will be matched by SEED based on income level.
8 · University of Michigan School of Social Work
Matched savings programs, called individual development accounts (IDAs), are helping low-income families all over the country to purchase a first home, start or expand a business, or pay for post-secondary education. Sherraden created the IDA concept, which has been tested in federal legislation and in more than 40 states. It is a cornerstone of his vision for a new social policy—a policy that adds asset building to traditional income support.
Asset-building for all
“I think we are in period much like at the beginning of the 20th century, when social and economic life was changing rapidly and a lot of new approaches were being tested. Social work in the early 1900s, characterized by Hull House and the settlement movement, was designed for an industrializing society. We’re now in a similar period of change as we adapt to the information age. “Social work has two equally honorable traditions,” he reflects. “One is helping people who don’t have enough or are in a state of crisis. The second is investing in people so that they can develop their capabilities and contribute to the greater society and economy. “The ‘care and concern’ theme has been more prominent over the past century, and that is as it should be. It is an expression of our common humanity. But the second, which we can call social development, looks beyond problems and deficiencies toward increasing ‘capabilities,’ meaning that people and communities should have opportunities to reach their potential to be and do, in the words of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. “I see the two social work themes as entirely complementary. I totally support the care and concern side, but I do think we need to pay attention to the development side as well. In the long run, this will have the greatest payoff.” Development has always been his bailiwick. In 1991, Sherraden published Assets and the Poor, offering a simple but groundbreaking approach to overcoming poverty. Instead of a welfare system that barely helped poor people make ends meet, why not create a process through which they could build assets for the future?
2009 International Seoul Welfare Forum