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Investing in our colleges is investing in North Carolinians
All people deserve the opportunity to thrive. This means having the chance to develop one’s talents and skills and find meaningful and fulfilling work that pays a living wage. To make this a reality, we need well-funded systems in place that allow everyone, regardless of their gender, race, or class, the opportunity to improve their…
The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Mass Deportation: What’s at Risk in North Carolina
Immigration Research Initiative and NC Budget & Tax Center The authors would like to thank Emily Eisner, Andrew Perry, and Nathan Gusdorf of the Fiscal Policy Institute, who with David Dyssegaard Kallick co-authored a similar report in New York State that was jointly published by the Fiscal Policy Institute and Immigration Research Initiative. Key Findings…
2024 Annual Impact Report
Download a PDF of this report Connecting with Communities to Shape Policy Priorities for NC An election year brings both opportunities and challenges for a non-partisan nonprofit organization that is hyper-focused on advancing public policies that improve people’s lives. The opportunity is to engage people who are hearing more about the promises of what policy can…
2025 Living Income Standard Methodology
View the 2025 Living Income Standard dashboard The 2025 Living Income Standard (LIS) captures how much income working people and families need to afford basic expenses. BTC develops an LIS for every county in North Carolina approximately every two years. We use actual cost data to estimate how much money families need to pay for…
2025 Living Income Standard
To open the dashboard full-size in another browser window, click here. To download a spreadsheet of the 2025 Living Income Standard data, click here. To read the methodology, click here. Some folks are having issues with downloading PDFs from this dashboard. If you are having those issues, try opening this link and downloading the PDF…
Executive Summary: North Carolinians deserve the credit
Read the full report Download a PDF of this executive summary Despite strong state performance on traditional measures of economic success, financial hardship is widespread in North Carolina and child poverty rates are high. Data show that households with children particularly struggle to pay their regular expenses, while structural barriers that block North Carolinians of…
North Carolinians deserve the credit
Read the Executive Summary How a bold Child Tax Credit can slash child poverty, boost well-being, and help our state economy thrive No matter where we come from or what we look like, we all want to be able to provide the basics for our children: healthy food to eat, a safe place to sleep,…
2023-2025 NC Budget Report: Locking in more tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of everyday North Carolinians
[Note: Here are links where you can access the budget bill and the conference report. You can also see how members of the NC Senate and NC House of Representatives voted for this conference budget.] Download a PDF of this report Budget and tax decisions are how we come together as North Carolinians – Black, brown, and white, in every county across…
North Carolina’s poverty rate is a policy choice
The latest poverty data from the U.S. Census Bureau released last month shows that more than 1.3 million North Carolinians — including more than 380,000 NC children — were living below the federal poverty line in 2022. For a family of four, this is the equivalent of $27,750 in household income in a year — resources so low that families are forced to make impossible choices among buying groceries, paying rent, and meeting basic health care needs.
NC leaders’ tax cuts for wealthy mean we will lose more than $13 billion for NC needs
Combined with the personal and corporate income tax cuts that had already been scheduled, new cuts in the recent North Carolina budget are estimated to lead to a loss of over $13.5 billion in revenue per year when fully implemented. (This is a low estimate; the higher estimate is $15.2 billion.)