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FrameWorks UK

Economic Justice

People know the economy isn’t working, but not how it should work, or what we need to do to get there. Effective framing can turn passive unease into active support for economic justice.

In the 1980s, the conservative case for lower taxes was framed with a memorable metaphor: “trickle-down” economics. Four decades later, this frame is still with us.

The frames that are in play influence not just how people understand the economy, but the kinds of economic policies they support. If the economy is a pie, we have to slice it up. The topic quickly turns to who gets how much and who loses out. If it’s an invisible hand, best to leave it alone. But, FrameWorks research has found, if it’s a software program—we can see why and how we might reprogram it.

Language and ideas matter for major economic sectors, like housing, or contributors to economic wellbeing, like good neighborhoods and healthy, affordable food.

Explore how to frame a range of economic issues.

Featured Work

Two young girls with face paint

Where We Thrive

Neighborhood revitalization is essential to ensuring families of all backgrounds and zip codes can thrive. Too often, however, this work is invisible, devalued, or just misunderstood. It’s time...
Report

Navigating Cultural Mindsets of Race and Place in the United States

The places where we live shape our lives. Structural racism has shaped and continues to shape where and how Americans live.
Report

Framing the Economy

These are times of great danger but also of great possibility. For the first time in decades, there is a sense that the economic consensus is fracturing, that a change must and will come. A space...

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Report

Planning for Our Future: The Contribution of Simplifying Models to Conceptualizing Budgets and Taxes

This report presents "Forward Exchange" as an explanatory metaphor that prompts people to think about public budgets and taxes in new ways.
Report

Every Picture Tells A Story: An Examination of Racialized Visuals and their Frame Effects

Is there a difference between images that explicitly depict Black children and visuals that more subtly cue the issue of race?
Report

Like Mars to Venus: The Separate and Sketchy Worlds of Budgets and Taxes

This report uses cognitive interviews to investigate Americans’ thinking about budgets and taxes- both as separate issues and as they relate to each other.
Frame Testing Recommendations

How to Talk About Rural Issues

This Message Brief distills strategies for talking about rural health, rural economic development, and other rural issues.
Frame Testing Recommendations

Framing the Food System

This MessageMemo distills insights from a set of related studies. It recommends ways to communicate more effectively about the food system, obesity, and related issues.
Report

Promoting a Realistic Understanding of Rural America

This report identifies promising explanatory strategies that help Americans think more productively about rural parts of the country.
Frame Testing Recommendations

Talking Rural Issues

This MessageMemo distills insights from a set of inter-related studies about how people think about rural issues. It offers time-tested recommendations for communicating more effectively about...
Toolkit

Talking Transitional Work

This toolkit offers a collection of key documents from the FrameWorks Institute's research on how Minnesotans view transitional jobs programs, based on research conducted in that state in late...
Report

Making the Public Case for Transitional Jobs Programs in Minnesota

This Memo reports on findings from the FrameWorks Institute’s research on how Minnesotans think about transitional jobs programs, the problems they address and the constituencies they benefit.
Report

Communities that Work: An Analysis of Qualitative Research Exploring Perceptions of Lifetrack Programs and Policies

This is the second in a series of reports designed by the FrameWorks Institute to explore public understanding of, and support for, transitional work experience programs. This particular phase of...
Report

Barriers to Public Engagement with Transitional Work: Visibility, Worthiness, and Efficacy Findings from Cognitive Interviews

The analysis presented here is based on intensive one-on-one interviews conducted by Cultural Logic in the fall of 2004 with a diverse group of nineteen individuals in Minnesota.
Report

Perceptions & Misperceptions: An Analysis of Qualitative Research Exploring Views of Rural America

This report demonstrates that to the extent possible, rural problems should be discussed within a broader national system indicating causes and consequences.