 Well, good morning. We'll get the program underway. I'm Reed Kramer, your host and director of the Millennials Initiative here at New America. And the Millennials Initiative was created to acknowledge that today's young adults are coming of age in an era of economic uncertainty. And just as they're approaching their prime work and family-forming years, their poor finances are complicating the building blocks of success. And it was only a few years ago that the popular narrative kind of emerged depicting Millennials as this ascendant generation with attentive parents and dazzling technology and optimism about the future. Now, a lot of actual Millennials kind of resisted some of these generalizations that were foisted upon them. But they maybe didn't feel that they captured the diversity and the complexity of their experiences. But there still is this kind of coalescing force, which is reflected in a shared sense of economic insecurity and vulnerability, which is born of coming of age in the wake of the Great Recession. So we've seen stagnant incomes, volatile incomes. We've seen rising liabilities and debts, and also very low savings and asset ownership. And all of these have given rise to a new narrative, which is that Millennials appear on a trajectory where they're unlikely to match the success, the economic success of their parents and grandparents. And as we're going to see this morning reviewing a lot of different data and evidence, the current generation, the wealth gap, the generational wealth gap has reached historic proportions. And it's already having real world consequences. There's an especially troubling, persistent racial wealth gap that is actually being reproduced among young adults today. We'll see that it's not just a legacy, it's being reproduced actively in current affairs. So what do we do about it? Can Millennials catch up? How should policy respond? These are the questions that we're going to talk about today and that are addressed in a new book released this week by New America called The Emerging Millennial Wealth Gap, Divergent Trajectories, Weak Balance Cheats, and Implications for Social Policy. And the book is a culmination of a year long research project, which is focusing on this new dimension of inequality in America today, which is generational. The publication, there it is, kind of connects a lot of cutting edge research with commentary, and it features contributions from 22 authors in 14 chapters. There's interactive slides and graphs, thanks to our wonderful editorial team. And it really is an impressive, I think, body of work that shows what the trends are and what some of the issues are going forward. So what we're going to do today is hear from some of the authors and provide a few frames of reference. The data that's presented, the trends that are identified, are designed to explore some of the underlying dynamics that are driving the generational distribution of wealth. And collectively, the authors are contributing to a very constructive process to address this misalignment between public policy and lived experience. So I invite you to read their work, dig into the book, but also please that we can present highlights today. So we have three panels on tap for you. The first one's going to look at the generational balance sheet and components of the balance sheet. The second is going to focus specifically on the student debt issue. And then the third is going to explore implications for social policy. I'll also want to acknowledge up front the support of our funder. All this work's been made possible by the support of the City Foundation. And they've been supporting a wide range of efforts to promote expanding opportunities among young adults, both in the United States and worldwide. And their Pathways to Progress Initiative, which has supported us, has just been wonderful. And it really gets right to the heart of the matter. And I'm very pleased to have Julie Hodgson here from the City Foundation, who's been a great partner in this work. Among other things, she supported a fellowship program. We ran here at New America last year, which identified some opportunities for some young people right out of college to come work at the think tank here. And they produced a lot of great work, which is also available online. So I've asked Julie to come help me welcome you and share a little bit about how cities approaching this work. Great. Thank you, Reed, for that kind introduction. And good morning, everyone. I'm really excited to be with you today. As New America launches the Emerging Millennial Wealth Gap Report. As Reed mentioned, I'm a program officer at the City Foundation, where we are committed to ensuring young people have the tools and resources necessary to navigate the obstacles presented by today's economy. Worldwide millennials make up approximately 50% of the global workforce. And yet today's complicated and rapidly changing socioeconomic environment is fueling insecurity. Young people are confronted with a vast array of challenges, including lack of quality education and jobs, growing economic inequality, climate change, and growing political tensions across their communities. As a response to many of these issues, the City Foundation launched its Pathways to Progress initiative nearly six years ago to invest in interventions that are helping young people pursue their career and economic ambitions by connecting them to on-ramps to opportunity. By 2020, the City Foundation will have invested $150 million to impact the lives of 600,000 youth globally. And it's important to note that Pathways to Progress is really about partnerships, because we recognize that the magnitude and complexity of the issues facing young people today requires a holistic multi-sector response. And so that's why we've been supporting New America and Reed Kramer in this body of work to bring together a diverse group of policymakers, practitioners, philanthropists, thought leaders, to discuss the issues at hand, to share knowledge with one another, to explore trends, and engage in a solutions-oriented conversation about how the country can ensure access to opportunity continues to exist for future generations. Our hope is that the ideas presented in this report help spark your own thinking, as well as prompt all of us to further evaluate how we can support young people moving forward. Because ultimately, we believe it will require the strengthening of the entire youth serving ecosystem to ensure that young adults have what they need to rise above the challenges they face and create opportunities for themselves, for their families, and their communities. And so with that, I want to thank New America for hosting us today, and specifically Reed Kramer, for his engagement and thoughtfulness over the past year and exploring the complex issues facing millennials. And we want to congratulate you, Reed, on this publication, as well as your contribution to the field. It's really been remarkable. So thank you. All right, thank you, Julie. You've really been wonderful to work with. All right, so before we hear from the authors, just a few frames of reference here in my remarks. Millennials, who are we talking about here? Pew Research Centers done a lot of great work, and they've defined millennials as those born between 1981 and 1996, meaning that the youngest are kind of in their early 20s. The oldest are now entering their late 30s. And you can see the distribution there. The main caveat is that designing and defining generational names and labels is kind of an art. It's not a science, and it kind of collapses differences, and it kind of creates these arbitrary demarcations. But it gives us a group to work with analytically. We can compare them across time and also contemporaneously. And they're not just the future. They're right here. They're moving into their prime, their setting trends, and they're the bridge to what's coming next. So they were born. America kind of had this mini birth boom. So there were relatively more of them than the generation exers that I'm a part of. And today, millennials are 22% of the population, but they're 30% of the voting age population. They're 38% of the working age population. And they're already outpacing boomers. And by 2025, they're going to comprise 75% of the workforce. They share cultural experiences, historic events, formative experiences that kind of make them distinct from older generations. Certainly, technology gets a lot of attention. But here's a little timeline just to kind of jog our memories. There were some early events like the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was the Columbine in Oklahoma, a city bombing. Were kind of these disruptive events that might be early in their memories. Political polarization was kind of emerging with the Clinton era impeachment. And millennials were between 5 and 20 when 9-11 occurred. And they grew up during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then certainly, the Great Recession looms large. And that's one of the themes that we're going to see today. They were between the ages of 12 and 27 when Barack Obama was elected president, first black president. And the youth vote played a big role in that. And then in 2016, the results of that election were pretty memorable and unexpected for millennials to say the least, maybe, election Donald Trump. So there's also a lot of indicators improved during social indicators, improved during their lifetimes. Violent crime fell sharply. Smoking, drinking, teen pregnancy all went down, along with other risky behavior. Now, there are downsides to making too many generalizations. But one of the issues with millennials is how diverse they are. They're really a generation that's defined by their diversity. And they're the most ethnically diverse that we've ever had in American history, except for the people that are born behind them and coming up next. Of millennials, 44% identify as something other than white, non-Hispanic. And it's the rising share of new minority groups, like Hispanics and Asians, that's really one of the key characteristics that distinguish millennials. So for instance, boomers, 7% were Hispanic. Among millennials, it's 21%. So that has tripled. And in the near term, the working population is going to have more racial and ethnic diversity. And the non-working population is going to be more overwhelmingly white baby boomers. So there is this kind of potential for cultural tension. But I want to focus more today on this kind of the economic experiences. And they've come of age at a time of historic concentration of wealth. This graph, which is in the book and is actually designed by my daughter, who is maybe not a millennial. She might be in the next generation. But it shows that when you rank by wealth, the richest 10% hold now 77% of wealth. And there were big changes since 1992, which is the middle bar there. Most of the changes, a lot of them occurred in the top 1%, which has been pretty dramatic, moving from 30% to 38% of wealth. And this means that the bottom share of families, the 90% of families, the wealth share has been falling for the past 25 years, dropping from 33% to 23% in 2016. Here's a little snapshot of wealth by age. And as you can expect, it goes up as people get older. The average person starts out in their 20s with very little savings in wealth. It grows through their work years and usually peaks. Historically, it peaked around the early 70s. But recently, that peak has really been pushed later. So the over 75 has the bigger number here in 2016. And this is what it looks like over time. This is the graphic depiction of the generational wealth gap expressed in terms of median net worth by households under the age of 35 and over the age of 75. And both cohorts lost wealth after the recession, but it's the older families that have gotten back on track. And really, the economic data, we're going to review it today in the first panel, it really shows that a lot of the younger families have fallen significantly behind older generations in terms of wealth accumulation. They're in a fundamentally different place economically. And I think that's going to have ramifications. The emerging, well, it's not emerging, but we've had a historic racial wealth gap. And it's been particularly devastating for communities of color. They've experienced discrimination, which is really a euphemism for brutal inhumanity and injustice, which has always historically has had huge economic consequences. But despite the civil rights movement, these have been largely unaddressed and wealth disparities have persisted. And in fact, as we'll see in the book, the chapter on the racial wealth gap shows how it's being reproduced in a very contemporaneous way. So it's not just history, this is current events. And if we acknowledge that the diversity of this generation is real and that there's been divergent experiences, then we have to look at those disparities. And that's what a number of the authors do in their chapters in the book. So what drives wealth accumulation? It's often income, which creates the ability to save. And that's where coming of age in the wake of the recession comes in. The structure of the economy is different today in very fundamental ways. Although millennials are better educated and better credentialed, the labor market has been delivering jobs with flatter wages and fewer benefits. There's been a rise of freelance work. There's been this drive for flexibility for employers. And that's kind of left shorter employment, 10 years, less workforce attachment, and an overall decline in income, but a rise in income volatility. So this is the gig economy. And the overall impact of that is millennials have earned 20% less during their lifetime than boomers had at the same age. And interestingly, the unemployment rate has come down in recent years. And that figure's reported a lot. But the labor force participation rate for young adults between 18 and 34, that remains at really its lowest levels, participating in the economy, lowest levels in kind of four decades. And so I think people are underemployed in this economy. And this all impacts the balance sheet, which is kind of the wealth story. The balance sheet is weak, and it's structured differently than it has been in the past. There is fewer mortgage debt, but more student loan debt. There's fewer savings. There are fewer assets altogether. And we're going to hear a little bit about the housing story, which is central to this experience, where home ownership rate is down, but also the rate of household formation is down as well. And yes, rents are up too. So there's a lot of challenges in the economy. And there does appear to be an effect that the financial profile is impacting behavior of the millennial generation and these mild studs of adulthood. I think that wealth matters. It matters to people's lives. And actually, when I came to New America 16 years ago, I came to work with our asset building program, which was dedicated to the insight that savings and assets matter. It orients people to the future. It's an independent effect from just income alone, and that even small amounts of savings can make a difference for people with low incomes. It helps them find pathways to the future and think about the future, move up the economic ladder. So I'm really pleased that my colleague Ray Bouchera is on the program today. He's the one that was the founding director of our asset building program, who I came to work with. And he continues to be a real leading light in this work, looking at family finances. And he's doing that from his perch at the St. Louis Fed with his team. And we're going to hear from Anna Kent from his team about these wealth trends. So the milestones are changing. Millennials are marrying less. They're marrying later. They're having fewer children. The overall birth rate is at a record low. And we've seen these changes in home ownership. So that's kind of the groundwork, the setting, the frame today. What is to be done about all of this? Well, that's why we're here. I think there's value in surfacing these trends and reviewing the evidence and bringing different perspectives together. Millennials are also going to be, in their size, they're going to be increasing their influence on public opinion and voting. And I think that creates opportunities for policy change. But without large-scale policy change in a response, I think that a lot of the financial burdens of this particular cohort are going to really reproduce these troubling disparities. And so it's a collective exercise to figure out how to respond and what to do next. So that's why we're here. So thank you. We're going to move on to the presentations. I'm going to have Anna come up and start us off. And then we're going to proceed. Come on up, Anna. And then here's your clicker. And then we're going to have a few presentations following by Signa Mary and Young. And then Jen's going to come up and make some comments as well. Thank you. Thanks, Reid.