The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI), one of the country’s three federally-funded poverty centers, is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to monitoring trends in poverty and inequality, examining what is driving those trends, and developing science-based policy on poverty and inequality. We present here our third annual report examining the “state of the union” on poverty, inequality, and labor market outcomes.

The purpose of establishing this annual series of reports is to ensure that critical facts on poverty and inequality enjoy the same visibility as other indicators of the country’s health. There are of course all manner of analyses that take on separately such issues as poverty, employment, income inequality, health inequality, economic mobility, or educational access. This report instead provides a unified analysis that brings together evidence across these and other domains and thus allows for a comprehensive assessment of where the country stands.