Financial Capability and Asset Building Innovations for the Financial Well-Being Ecosystem

Submissions of scholarly abstracts are invited for “Financial Capability and Asset Building Innovations for the Financial Well-Being Ecosystem,” a convening scheduled for Wednesday, January 20, 2027, in San Francisco, California. The event will be held one day before the start of the 2027 Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research.

This event will bring together social work scholars and educators from around the globe to develop a broad agenda for advancing financial security and inclusion. Contributions to this convening will inform the development of research, policy, and practice agendas in the United States and other countries.

Background

Social work’s founding generations dedicated themselves to improving household economic life, but the profession largely moved away from that work by the middle of the 20th century. In the first quarter of the 21st century, rising inequality and financialization have prompted renewed global focus on the financial lives of vulnerable families. Innovations in financial capability and asset building (FCAB) have laid important groundwork for the research, policies, and practices advanced in this renewal. The field has broadened globally to what is now generally known as Financial Social Work.

Given the pace of change and the range of promising innovations, the time is opportune for an international forum on the future of financial well-being.

The Convening

“Financial Capability and Asset Building Innovations for the Financial Well-Being Ecosystem” will connect the National Endowment for Financial Education’s personal-finance ecosystem framework with the conceptual framework for financial capability and asset building. In addition to emphasizing a systematic and comprehensive understanding of financial well-being, both models recognize that sustainable outcomes require individual capability and structural opportunities.

The convening is organized by a special committee of the network “Build Financial Capability and Assets for All” within the Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative. This work is made possible through generous support from the Center for Social Development in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, the National Endowment for Financial Education, and the Saint Louis University School of Social Work. Continuing education credits will be available.

Call for Abstracts

The organizers invite scholarly abstracts for papers assessing structural factors that can inform policy and practice on financial capability and asset building within the financial well-being ecosystem. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Conceptual and theoretical contributions to personal financial well-being and financial capability
• Measurement and evidence for the personal finance ecosystem
• Social policy environments for financial capability and well-being
• Asset-building policies, including Child Development Accounts, Trump Accounts, and related policy designs, implementation, and impacts
• Workforce, education, and financial-education delivery, including social work as a scalable delivery system
• Global and comparative innovations in financial capability and asset building
• Financial inclusion, access, and equity
• Practice and interventions in financial capability and asset building with financially vulnerable populations
• Technology and digital infrastructure for financial capability and inclusion

Submission Guidelines

Please submit an abstract of 500 words or fewer by October 2, 2026.

Abstracts should include:

• Title
• Background
• Methods
• Results (or progress toward results)
• Implications
• References

The title and references are not included in the word count. Abstracts should adhere to the standards of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition).

Please submit abstracts, along with the names, primary affiliations, email addresses, and mailing addresses of all authors, to Lissa Johnson at ejohnson@wustl.edu.

Notification and Honorarium

The organizers will notify authors of abstracts accepted for conference presentation by early November 2026.

Authors of abstracts selected for inclusion in the convening will:

• Present their abstracts during breakout sessions
• Receive a $200 honorarium
• Be invited to submit their full papers for consideration for publication in a special journal issue

More Information

To learn more about the event, visit the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis.

Contact

For more details, please contact Christopher Leiker, Communications Manager, Center for Social Development, at cleiker@wustl.edu or 314.935.6268.