Traditionally, grantmakers have focused on workforce development and upskilling as part of economic mobility strategies for low-wage workers. However, as work has evolved and jobs look more different than ever, it is critical to understand the impact of these changes on income—predictability, variability, and frequency—and how this affects the opportunity for mobility.

This problem is not the same as income insufficiency, or simply the story of stagnating wages over the last few decades. These same workers are experiencing low-wages coupled with major week-to-week and month-to-month fluctuations in their income. When this volatility is combined with a general lack of upward mobility, the results are toxic: high-interest debt, unstable housing, and food insecurity, among other destabilizing effects. Income volatility combined with wage stagnation helps explain the precarious position many families find themselves in today.

And while volatility makes it harder to manage cash flows and can trigger demand for high-cost financial credit products, it also seems to have serious downstream effects on the health and education outcomes of children.

Read the full article about income instability by Joanna Smith-Ramani, David Mitchell and Katherine Lucas McKay from The Aspen Institute