Lena Bilik

Today is Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day. Disabled mothers make just 44 cents on the dollar to nondisabled fathers. Meanwhile, they do more with less, & hold the brunt of caregiving duties. Abolish the subminimum wage to ensure more disabled mothers can thrive: livingwageforall.org/call

I'm honored to be joining a panel discussion on Disability Employment and Economic Security on October 21 in recognition of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Work should be a pathway to economic security, but too many disabled people continue to face barriers that limit...

Universal childcare is gaining momentum. But as policymakers debate how to make it happen, what should "universal" actually mean? @lbilik.bsky.social spoke w/ @rcobooth.bsky.social about why it's time to move beyond means-tested fixes and toward a public system for all. www.vox.com/policy/50602...

Very excited to share this new paper by my research fellow @zraresearch.bsky.social on homeownership and the racial wealth gap! Could promoting black homeownership be part of the solution? Before we even get into issues of program effectiveness or scale we need to examine assumptions about...

It's telling that men would rather try to invent tech to replace humans' role in caregiving than step up as equal partners in parenting. Telling, that is, in that it shows how financial capitalism and patriarchy work together to dissuade men from doing "unprofitable" labor, like the work of care.

Two-thirds of real income growth in NYC has gone to the top 1% since 2019. In @nydailynews.com, Noa Rosinplotz shows why policymakers shouldn’t fear taxing the rich. “Instead, they should focus on raising the tax revenue we need to invest in affordability for everyone else.”

My latest brief on what a national universal childcare policy proposal should learn from the states leading the way on childcare!

This is the latest installment in @lbilik.bsky.social’s series on the people working to make childcare policy work in practice. From Vermont to California to Mississippi, frontline implementers show that universal childcare is ambitious, but far from impossible.

Childcare is still shaping whether—and how much—women can work. Nearly 27% of mothers reported that caregiving limited their paid work in 2022 and 2023, compared with just 2.9% of fathers. New research from Sarah Jane (SJ) Glynn explores that gap:

Housing affordability is a major driver of today’s cost-of-living crisis. We’re excited to welcome our new Good Life Residents for Housing! 🏠 @shehabchowdhury.bsky.social, @chenab.bsky.social, and @benjaminpreis.com will explore how federal policy can help build more homes, more affordably. More ⬇️

New Head Start "rules" are rly a step towards Project 2025's goal to fully dismantle the program, & it must be said that this goal is racist & ableist at its core - the rollback will particularly harm Black children, Latino children & children w/ disabilities, who are 29%, 40%, & 15% of Head Start.

For decades, productivity has risen while wage growth for most workers has lagged behind. Join us tomorrow at 3 PM ET for a conversation with @arindube.bsky.social on The Wage Standard, his new book on how we got here and how we can reset the labor market in workers' favor. ⬇️ Register below!

Weakening Head Start would also take one of the few reliable options low-income families have and make our tenuous, patchwork system of care even more fragile for all families. More from us ⬇️

Stripping Head Start requirements for class sizes, health screenings, home visits, early learning, disability access, and program hours is not just “deregulation.” It weakens one of the few comprehensive sources of care available to low-income families.

Care is economic infrastructure, but too often the people giving and receiving it are left out of the policy choices that dictate who bears the costs. That's why today's Day to Have Your Say centers those experiences through 1 Million Care Conversations. careconversations.com

Over 4 million people have lost SNAP benefits (10% of the pre-HR 1 rolls) over the last year mainly due to paperwork associated with expanded work requirements and state anti-fraud/anti-mistaken payment requirements.

I love how HR1 (the big beautiful bill) is structured like a series of sequential time bombs set to detonate in 2026, 2027, 2028 and beyond. Next up are the Medicaid work requirements which will add millions more to the uninsured. Then the provider tax changes that will collapse our HCBS system.

Wrote this a year ago but still relevant as more of the damage spreads from this disastrous budget agreement: rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/us-poli...

The latest in my series of interviews with state and local childcare experts - check it out. Those of us that think about childcare solutions at the national scale have so much to learn from these folks!

Check out the first installment of a series of interviews I'll be doing with state and local childcare experts -- Local implementors all over the country are proving that it is 100% possible to expand public childcare. We can learn a lot from them.

Required reading from @jessicacalarco.com --

New 📰: Every society needs care. The question is who gets stuck doing it. @jessicacalarco.com's new paper argues that America's default answer has been: whoever has the least power to refuse. 🧵 rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

People are tired of an economy that demands more work, more sacrifice, and more stress while giving less back in return to anyone who isn’t a billionaire, corporation, or political insider. Read The #GoodLife Agenda ⬇️

The money was always there for the good things.

"But well before the rules formally go into effect Jan. 1, they’re costing already-strapped states millions or tens of millions to implement." Oh hey i's the thing policy wonks (including me) said would happen. I expect at least some states to apply for and receive extensions. It's a heavy lift!

Humbled to speak with and lift up the thoughts of Tashieanna Smith, a family childcare provider who participated in the Day Without Childcare strike this month. Listening to family childcare providers can clearly show us the cracks in our broken childcare system, and can point us towards solutions.

This Thursday we and @epi.org are hosting a must-attend webinar on the future of the minimum wage, featuring new research on why the federal wage floor must be raised and why arguments against it don’t hold up to the evidence. You won’t want to miss it. Sign up here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

It continues to make zero sense to put our health/the health of our loved ones into the hands of employers. The collective care we need will never come from companies driven by profit, and, as this article notes, the whims of misogynistic authoritarians. We need national paid family leave YESTERDAY.

This is one reason I find the idea that the safety net for the elderly comes at the cost of the safety net for everyone else to be crazy. In the absence of sufficient income support and LTSS options, family steps in. And it is usually women who pay the price. marketrealist.com/retirement/m...

Appreciate this take from @ehaspel.bsky.social re: intro'd Child Care Modernization Act. We can't get sidetracked by childcare proposals that tinker around the edges of a broken system. It's time policymakers prioritize what we rly need: bold proposals for universal childcare that meet the moment.

⬇️ This Roosevelt guy might be on to something.

A labor of love, w/ too many people to thank for their partnership & brilliance. New analysis: 👉 46% of kids < 6 still live in a licensed child care desert 👉 70% of kids in remote rural areas affected 👉 ~50% rural low-income families lack Head Start access www.americanprogress.org/article/amer...

Would LOVE if we could all stop talking about public policies to encourage higher birth rates, and instead push for public policies that ensure children are happy, safe, valued members of society!

Important new brief from @rooseveltinstitute.org out today from Jessica Forden on the impact of the US’s lack of a public long-term care system on low- and middle-income families. The need for long term care is simply a part of life, and a perfect example of something that should be a public good.