NCID-1197
Terri Friedline
Associate Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 Social Work (University of Pittsburgh)
About
Dr. Terri Friedline conducts research to envision, redefine, and move financial and economic justice, particularly with individuals and communities traditionally excluded from or marginalized by the financial system. Since access to the financial system is required for full and dignified participation in today's economy, Friedline studies systemic solutions for improving access to basic financial products like bank accounts and low-cost credit. Her most recent research, Mapping Financial Opportunity (#MapFinOpp), investigates the financial system from a structural perspective and reveals the unequal and racialized ways that financial services like banks, credit unions, and payday lenders exploit and invest in communities. She is a faculty director with the Center on Assets, Education and Inclusion, a faculty expert with Poverty Solutions (both at the University of Michigan), and a research fellow at New America in Washington, DC. She received her MSW and Ph.D. in social work from the University of Pittsburgh.
Current Work
Dr. Friedline is advancing her scholarship on financial access and marginalization through a project called Mapping Financial Opportunity (#MapFinOpp; https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/mapping-financial-opportunity/), along with faculty and student collaborators. This project investigates where financial services are located relative to population demographics in communities across the United Sta,EST and unveils racialized and exploitative patterns of financial access. Banks tend to avoid opening and maintaining branches in black and brown communities, while charging disproportionately more for their products and services in black and brown communities. For example, Friedline's research finds that average checking account costs are $190.09 higher for blacks, $25.53 higher for Asians, and $262.09 higher for Latinx when compared to whi,EST adding up maintenance fees, minimum balances, and overdraft fees. Given the potential of digital technologies to advance financial access, Dr. Friedline's research also includes studying patterns in high-speed internet access and rates of online and mobile banking. She finds that concurrent and intersecting spatial patterns of race and poverty reinforce limited access to high-speed internet, threatening to exclude black and brown communities and lower-income white communities from digital technologies and the financial marketplace while augmenting the privileges and advantages afforded to white and higher-income communities. This work identifies policy solutions, such as strong regulations and consumer protections, that can support a more equitable and inclusive financial system.
Research Area Keyword(s)
banks, Financial access, marginalization, payday lenders, public policy