Today, economic opportunities, education and health care are growing increasingly reliant on technology and broadband connectivity.

Opportunity Nation shares key stories that explore opportunity-related issues in powerful, provocative ways. Many of these articles and op-eds include new data and research on key economic, educational, social and civic factors that affect upward mobility and community well-being.

An insightful, sobering March 16 story in the New York Times details just how hard it has become to lift oneself up from poverty in America, even if a person works hard. This thoroughly-reported article: Low-Wage Workers Are Finding Poverty Harder to Escape should be required reading for anyone who believes that people who struggle just to get by every day deserve their plight because they lack a work ethic or shirk responsibility for their complicated lives.

A compelling story this weekend in the New York Times highlighted the sharply divergent life expectancies of residents of one of the wealthiest counties in the United States – Fairfax County, Virginia – and one of the poorest, located just 350 miles to its west – McDowell County, West Virginia.

A series of high-profile proposals to broaden access to community college by making it free for recent high school graduates have emerged recently.

Opportunity Nation shares key stories that explore opportunity-related issues in powerful, provocative ways. Many of these articles and op-eds include new data and research on key economic, educational, social and civic factors that affect upward mobility and community well-being.

Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he called expanding economic opportunity and mobility the “defining issue of our time,” opportunity is once again in the spotlight in his 2015 “Opportunity For All” budget.

Opportunity Nation’s diverse coalition has long supported the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the most effective anti-poverty programs of the last 40 years, and one that has benefitted millions of low-income families. But the EITC needs to be expanded to help lift more Americans out of poverty, especially adults without children and noncustodial parents.

Recognizing the importance of supporting multiple pathways to educational and career success, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) recently submitted legislation that would enable workers without traditional higher education degrees to get jobs in federal agencies that currently require them.