"Individual Development Accounts: Policies to Build Savings and Assets for the Poor"

In this policy brief published by The Brookings Institution, Ray Boshara analyzes the usefulness of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) - matched savings accounts for low-income households - as a way of improving the lives of the poor, especially in the United States. Boshara concludes that "broadening the ownership of assets - through IDAs, children’s savings accounts, and targeted tax subsidies for wealth accumulation - may help expandeconomic security and opportunity for the nation’s poor" In the brief, he discusses progress on IDAs in such places as the United Kingdom and Canada.