Recent Research

The Community Wealth Building Initiative deployed an ecosystem approach to build sustainable local infrastructure for lasting community wealth development. This approach recognizes that isolated organizations cannot transform entrenched economic structures alone. Success requires an interconnected network of cooperative enterprises, technical assistance providers, advocates, funders, policymakers, and other stakeholders aligned around democratic participation and community control. The City of Chicago implemented the initiative in three phases, each concerned with strengthening the CWB ecosystem on the South and West Sides of Chicago: first, deepening local infrastructure and technical assistance capacities; second, strengthening the pipeline of CWB projects; and finally, investing in “proof of concept” projects. This staging of implementation demonstrates the power of coordinated strategy for breaking down traditional silos in economic development and building collective power exceeding what any single organization can achieve.

Through documentation and analysis, this report and related research help to decode processes of community-led development and incubation of models for equitable development. By tracking processes, outcomes, and challenges across diverse projects, the resulting insights can inform and improve future community wealth-building efforts.

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This report focuses on data workers in a growing technology hub: Nairobi, Kenya. Fueled by a young, educated, tech-savvy population, a workforce with cultural and linguistic proficiency, an economy with globally competitive labor costs, and significant government efforts to lure tech-related investment, Kenya has emerged as a center for digital labor. Thousands of Kenyans are employed by business process outsourcing companies (BPOs) or work for online labor platforms, undertaking data annotation and content moderation on behalf of major global corporations. A defining characteristic of the digital economy, in Kenya and elsewhere, is the complex web of outsourcing relationships. Major tech companies rarely employ labelers or moderators directly. Instead, they contract the work to large multinational BPOs or specialized platforms that, in turn, often subcontract parts of the work to smaller, local BPOs or use labor brokers to enlist workers from local labor markets. The layers of subcontracting in digital supply chains create opacity: workers at the end of the chain have no visibility into the end client whose products they are building or safeguarding. Outsourcing has profound impacts on working conditions, as layers of intermediaries skim margins and make it difficult for workers to hold lead firms accountable for labor violations or poor treatment. This report sheds light on the experiences of Kenyan data workers at the far reaches of digital supply chains and offers recommendations based on workers’ desires for improved working conditions.

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by David López-García, Nebiyou Tilahun, and Muhammad Shafaat Nawaz

Understanding the role of space in development interventions is essential, as there is reason to believe spatial attributes may influence program outcomes. This study assesses the extent to which proximity and/or access to spatial features such as markets, concentrations of economic activity, access to governmental services, and critical infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, or water play a role in the success of programs’ targeting. By analyzing the case of World Vision’s Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR I) program in Ethiopia, we evaluate the relationship between spatial variables broadly and the positive effects of the programs’ treatments. The project is guided by the following research questions: Do treatments still effectively influence SPIR I program outcomes when spatial variables are controlled for? How did the SPIR I program treatment interventions interact with the spatial characteristics of the intervention regions to affect outcomes? What are the implications of these findings for targeting in development interventions? Using secondary data from an experiment designed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) titled “Impact evaluation of the Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR I)”, we estimate three separate linear mixed effects models, one for each outcome variable of interest: women empowerment, nutrition, and livelihoods. The models include a random effect to account for unobserved heterogeneity between Kebele groups (spatial units composed of contiguous Kebeles) in which the treated households are nested. In addition, each model accounts for treatments, household and spatial covariates, and interactions between treatments and spatial variables. The study’s main finding is that spatial context can affect program outcomes in both unobservable and observable ways. First, for all three outcomes of interest, we find that unmeasured place-based factors help explain variation in outcomes even after controlling for observed spatial covariates. Second, observed spatial covariates affect some outcomes. For example, we find that the effectiveness of livelihood interventions varied with a household’s distance to market. On the other hand, treatment effects on women’s empowerment and nutrition were not sensitive to the spatial variables we examined.

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by Nik Theodore

This report presents the findings of a study assessing the extent to which workers employed at active fire cleanup worksites in Altadena are using appropriate PPE. It finds that workers at many cleanup sites do not have the types of PPE that are needed to protect them from known hazards. The next section explains the methods of data
collection. This is followed by a brief review of the dangers associated with cleanup activities after urban fires and a presentation of the data. The conclusion summarizes the findings and offers recommendations for improving health and safety on the job.

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By Nik Theodore and Zaina Alsous

Across South Florida: development is booming. With record-setting construction employment, this should be a great time to be a construction worker. Historically, jobs in the construction industry have been regarded as “good” blue-collar jobs that provided
a pathway into the middle class through family-supporting wages, opportunities for advancement, and the prospects of a comfortable retirement at the end of a career. However, the results of this WeCount! study of working conditions in the commercial construction industry in Miami and Fort Lauderdale reveal that in most building trades occupations, wages are low, employment benefits are not provided, and health and safety risks are common. The impacts on workers are significant—they face economic hardships, have few opportunities for career advancement, and must cope with heightened risks of injury on the job. Health and safety in the workplace is of particular concern for construction workers, as the industry has seen the number of injuries and deaths rise with industry growth. While South Florida is known for its expanding skyline, marked by the visibility of tall buildings and cranes overseeing the coast, the dangerous and precarious conditions under which construction workers labor remain largely invisible, though government statistics present a reminder of the hazards involved; on average, a construction worker dies on the job in Florida every four days.

The Florida construction industry is facing record labor shortages, and is consistently unable to meet the need for skilled labor that the demand for new development requires. At the same time, the impacts of the climate crisis are exacerbating precarity and risk for workers: from the record levels of extreme heat across South Florida to the intensifying storms. The current lack of uniform safety, quality, and labor standards, along with low wages and the absence of adequate protections and protocols in the South Florida construction industry, are unsustainable and pose great risks to the future of an industry that is essential to the local and national economy.

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by Workers Defense Project in collaboration with the Center for Urban Economic Development

Behind the Texas Miracle examines the working conditions of construction workers in the Austin, Dallas􏰀Fort Worth, and Houston metropolitan areas. These cities frame much of the “Texas Triangle,” the fastest-growing area of the state–and one of the most important construction markets in the United States. Projects across the three metropolitan areas account for more than 70% of statewide construction spending. Yet this new examination of construction job quality across the Texas Triangle reveals that many positions are substandard: most workers do not earn a living wage, few receive adequate safety training, and opportunities for career advancement are limited. The implications for workers are significant. With the Texas construction industry continuing to grow and with labor shortages mounting, now is the time for policymakers and industry leaders to ensure that all construction jobs provide family- supporting wages, benefits, and safe worksites. To this end, we conclude the report with a set of policy recommendations to strengthen the industry and protect its workforce.

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by Beth Gutelius and Sanjay Pinto.

The country’s largest private employer, Walmart’s workplace practices have a direct impact on hundreds of thousands of workers, and indirect effects on millions more given the ways the company shapes labor markets in retail and logistics. While critiques of working conditions in Walmart’s retail stores are familiar, the experiences of workers in the company’s warehouses have received far less attention.

The data presented in this report suggest that Walmart’s focus on low-cost, high-efficiency retailing comes at the expense of worker well-being. The introduction of new monitoring technologies results in many Walmart warehouse workers feeling constantly under watch and compelled to work at unsustainable rates. Many also experience adverse physical and mental health impacts, with the pace of work a leading factor in high rates of injury. And large proportions of Walmart warehouse workers experience different forms of economic insecurity that worsen the toll on health and wellbeing. Both at Walmart and other employers, new laws and policies could curb the destructive impacts of workplace monitoring, limit work pace and intensity to more manageable levels, and afford workers the choice to bargain collectively over their working conditions.

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