Our Research
Commonwealth conducts original qualitative and quantitative research with financially vulnerable people—including Black, Latinx, and women-led households who disproportionately experience financial insecurity. We also interview industry experts and academics. We take what we learn and translate findings into actionable insights and practical solutions designed to change systems to work better for financially vulnerable people. We work with community groups, employers, financial services firms, fintechs, policymakers, and workplace solution providers to design and test real-world, practical solutions that not only work for individuals and families, but are also scalable and address the business needs of our partners.
We share the results of our work to provide you with innovative ideas, practical insights, and the tools you need to act. Explore our publications below.
A Wealth Building Blueprint
Wealth matters: it delivers material, psychological and societal benefits, not just for individuals and families, but also for communities and the nation. Yet building wealth is a persistent challenge for low- to moderate-income (LMI) Americans who continue to become less…
Conquering the Storm with Resilience
Since June we have been talking with 56 low- to moderate-income households about their financial lives. This report summarizes what we have learned from these in-depth interviews. The extreme volatility and uncertainty in the number of COVID-19 cases, the subsequent…
Designing Children’s Savings Accounts for Equity
Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) are an increasingly popular mechanism for addressing the struggle to pay for college. CSAs reflect two realities: starting early is the best way to build savings, and dedicating resources to paying for college raises the educational…
A New Framework for Positive Financial Futures
Financial systems must be designed to enable both the financial context and non-financial factors required to build a prosperous and equitable economy. Changing the landscape of financial security and opportunity for people living on low to moderate incomes (LMI) requires…
Building Credit to Build Wealth
Having a good financial credit score is a staple of American opportunity, but for many people it seems out of the realm of possibility. While 77% of Americans living on low to moderate incomes (LMI) have heard of ways to…
Recordkeepers’ Role in Solving the U.S. Emergency Savings Crisis
Employers and recordkeepers can play a key role in improving the financial security of U.S. workers through initiatives that enable short-term, liquid savings. With 37% of Americans unable to manage a $400 emergency with savings, and lower-income households, women, and…
A Lighthouse in the Storm
To better understand what role institutions currently play in low- to moderate-income (LMI) households’ financial lives—and what role they would like them to play—we surveyed the households participating in our study on their perceptions of government, employers, financial institutions, and…
Prize-Linked Savings in Credit Unions: 2019
As with previous years, prize-linked savings (PLS) products continued to grow in 2019. An additional 1.8 million people gained access to PLS products last year, bringing the total to 5.3 million consumers who now have the option to build savings…
Financial Coping Strategies
When Commonwealth began conducting interviews in June 2020, 21 households in our study had already lost 50% or more of their income due to COVID-19-related job loss or a severe reduction in hours. By the end of July, these households…
Emergency Savings
In the latest brief from Commonwealth’s Financial Resilience Project: COVID Stories, Rapid Insights, we share our latest insights on how people are using emergency savings during the COVID crisis, the difficulty of starting a savings habit during the crisis, and the…