NCEO Research Links ESOPs with Better Economic Prospects
Executive Director
On May 22, the NCEO issued a special bulletin announcing new research. In Employee Ownership and Economic Well-Being (see www.ownershipeconomy.org or download the full report as a PDF), NCEO research director Nancy Wiefek, PhD, examines data on workers aged 28 to 34 and finds that the employee-owners simply are economically better off than their non-employee-owner peers. What's new in these findings is the connection between employee ownership and the fortunes of individual workers: for example, the employee-owners in the study have 92% greater median household net wealth than the non-employee-owners.
Another groundbreaking aspect of this paper is that the dataset is powerful enough to allow analysis of demographic groups no one has been able to study before with regard to employee ownership. The strongly positive patterns of economic benefit extend to groups such as those without college educations, parents of young children, people of color, and single mothers.
You are welcome to share this research with others at your company, with journalists, with policy-makers, and anyone else who should know! The NCEO has a press kit and other resources to make it easy, and more will be following soon.
This project was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as part of a $200,000 grant covering the period from May 1, 2015, to March 31, 2017.