New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker is introducing a bill designed to give lower-income kids as much as $50,000 to use for wealth-building purchases, like a down payment on a house or college tuition.
These “opportunity accounts” theoretically would ensure that all children, rather than just those who grow up in wealthier homes, have significant assets when they enter adulthood.
“It would be a dramatic change in our country to have low-income people break out of generational poverty,” Booker said in an interview with Vox. “We could rapidly bring security into those families’ lives, and that is really exciting to me.”