“We launched this strategy to help remove the barriers that keep so many Americans from reaching their full potential. EMO’s journey reflects the foundation at its best, when it leads with empathy, evidence, and systems thinking.”
- Allan Golston, President, U.S. Program, Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation has wound down its Economic Mobility and Opportunity (EMO) strategy as part of a broader shift to accelerate impact.
In May 2025, the foundation shared a long-term commitment to increase its overall giving over the next two decades and complete its work by 2045, while making as much progress as possible toward its goals, including helping more people move out of poverty and into lasting economic opportunity.
This decision shaped the foundation’s move away from a direct investment approach through our EMO strategy and toward a significant investment to help co-found NextLadder Ventures, one of the most substantial commitments in the foundation’s U.S. Program history.
The foundation is deeply grateful to its EMO partners and the strategy team for their commitment and the impact they helped make possible over the life of this work. The lessons, tools, and public resources created through our EMO strategy will continue to support communities, leaders, organizations, and families across the country.
What follows is a summary of the creation, evolution, and impact of our EMO strategy, along with some of the public resources that remain available to help policymakers, business and local leaders, researchers, and advocates expand economic mobility for Americans experiencing poverty.
Since its launch in 2018, the EMO strategy has made an impact and left an indelible mark on the lives of millions of people who have experienced poverty in this country:
1.4 million*
Helped more than 1.4 million people overcome barriers to economic security.
$2.2 billion
Unlocked $2.2 billion in safety net benefits for eligible individuals and families.
100,000
Improved job quality for over 100,000 workers earning low wages.
47,000
Equipped more than 47,000 local leaders with tools and data to support their communities.
$500 million
Invested over $500 million to drive innovation and partnerships that increase economic mobility.
Our story
At the Gates Foundation, we believe that every person deserves the chance to live a healthy, productive life. In the United States, this includes expanding opportunities for people experiencing poverty to experience and maintain upward economic mobility.
The foundation’s Economic Mobility and Opportunity (EMO) strategy was shaped by insights from the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, a cross-sector collaboration of researchers, advocates, service providers, and business leaders. Together, they set out to answer one bold question: What would it take to dramatically expand economic mobility and opportunity in this country?
The Partnership defined economic mobility around three core principles:
- Economic success
- Power and autonomy
- People being valued in their communities
To help address persistent barriers to economic opportunity, the foundation launched its EMO strategy in 2018. It began with a four-year, $158 million commitment to invest in data, research, and community-driven initiatives that strengthen coordination across housing, jobs, health, and social service systems.
MORE ON THE EMO STRATEGY LAUNCH
EMO's evolution
In 2022, the foundation renewed its commitment to the EMO strategy with a new four-year, $460 million investment, building on insights from the first phase.
A key part of the strategy’s evolution was adopting a defined focus population: nearly 50 million adults ages 16–64 earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level annually (roughly $29,000 for an individual and $60,000 for a family of four at the time).
This evolution enabled the team to ground its research and development in real-life challenges and design resources tailored to the needs of this population.
The updated strategy prioritized three interlocking pillars that worked together to advance economic mobility:
- Making Lives Better Now: Connecting skilled workers without bachelor’s degrees to good jobs, expanding access to safety net benefits for those eligible, and piloting innovations to address everyday challenges.
- Creating and Sharing User-friendly Tools and Insights: Developing resources, tools, and insights that help local and business leaders use data and proven strategies to improve job quality and reduce poverty
- Bringing Together Partners Across Sectors: Aligning goals and improving coordination in the economic mobility field.
The team also demonstrated how human-centered technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and patient capital can play a vital role in expanding opportunity.
MORE ON EMO'S EVOLUTION
Public goods and resources
As the foundation’s EMO strategy continued to be implemented, the EMO team invested heavily in high-quality public goods – accessible tools, datasets, and research-grounded frameworks – to help the field drive sustainable, system-level change in communities.
These resources were designed with input from local leaders, community organizations, and service providers to ensure they were impactful and addressed economic mobility challenges.
Below are a few of the tools, platforms, and resources created or supported by EMO strategy investments:
TOOLS, PLATFORMS, AND RESOURCES
Public Goods and Resources
- Economic Mobility Catalog – A resource that helps local leaders find and apply proven, evidence-based strategies to boost economic mobility in their communities.
- Good Jobs, Good Business Toolkit – A practical resource designed to help small businesses create high-quality jobs that improve employee well-being while strengthening the bottom line through increased productivity, retention, and long-term cost savings.
- Good Jobs – Working Definition – An evidence-based, shared definition of a quality job that has been used as the basis for numerous resources, tools, and research projects.
- Research Agenda for Improving Economic and Social Mobility – A rigorous study conducted by the National Academies, resulting in a comprehensive research agenda on economic and social mobility to inform and influence research and funding priorities.
- Upward Mobility Framework and its associated Mobility Metrics – Provides local leaders with an evidence-based foundation and a holistic definition of upward mobility, highlighting key factors that can help more people achieve economic success.
- VOICE Project – A research project that includes people with lived experience of financial hardship as co-researchers to shape what economic mobility research should focus on based on the priorities and realities they define.
Data and Insights Platforms
- Economic Tracker – Provides a near real-time snapshot of economic activity across the U.S. using anonymized private sector data.
- Eviction Tracking System – A multi-site, open-source, and expandable system for tracking eviction filings as they happen across the U.S.
- JUST Jobs Performance Tracker – A human capital strategy tool that gives the Russel 1000 companies comprehensive access to benchmarking data and leading practices across 27 key job quality metrics.
- Opportunity Atlas – Provides policy and program leaders with the latest evidence on economic mobility to help them develop and test economic mobility solutions in their communities.
- Social Capital Atlas – Shows how relationships and community connections in neighborhoods, schools, and colleges influence an individual’s chances of upward mobility.
- State of Working America Data Library – Provides researchers and policymakers with analyses related to the U.S. labor market.
Influential Research
- American Job Quality Study – Based on a survey of more than 18,000 workers, this is the first national study focused on understanding the quality, not just the quantity, of jobs in the U.S.
- Importance of Neighborhood Characteristics – This study uses data on 57 million children to show how changes in communities can rapidly shape economic mobility across generations.
- Intergenerational Mobility Trends – This research updates a key measure of economic mobility: the share of children who earn more than their parents for cohorts born from 1940 onward.
- Mobility Experiences – This research identifies 28 key life experiences that shape lifetime income, based on a review of over 230 studies and insights from more than 4,000 Americans.
- Predictive Power of Economic Connectedness – This research analyzes 21 billion Facebook friendships to map social capital by zip code and show how economic connectedness shapes economic mobility across communities.
- Private Equity Job Quality Initiative – This research examines job quality adoption in private equity and highlights nine firms, showing how the sector can improve outcomes for workers.
- WorkRise – A national research-to-action network that identifies and shares strategies to improve economic opportunity for workers earning low wages.
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EMO wind down
In May 2025, the Gates Foundation announced it would double its spending and conclude its work by 2045. As part of this shift, the foundation began winding down its EMO strategy and transitioning its funding to a bold new initiative: NextLadder Ventures.
NextLadder Ventures is a 15-year, $1 billion philanthropic initiative backed by the Gates Foundation, Ballmer Group, Stand Together, Valhalla Foundation, and John Overdeck to expand economic mobility for Americans experiencing poverty.
By funding innovators and organizations through grants, equity, and other financial tools, NextLadder harnesses emerging technologies, such as AI, to help people overcome systemic barriers to economic mobility.
The Gates Foundation’s nearly $500 million investment in NextLadder marks one of the most significant U.S. Program commitments in its history. This pivot reflects the foundation’s drive to accelerate impact and leverage transformative technologies to better support workers and the frontline organizations that serve them.
The legacy of the EMO strategy lives on in the public goods and resources that will shape the next generation of work to expand economic opportunity in the U.S.
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EMO timeline
The EMO strategy began with the hypothesis that increasing economic mobility would require not just funding but also a new approach to partnership, systems change, and lived experiences. Here is a timeline of a few key moments over the life cycle of the EMO strategy:
