As long-term investors, we view immigration as a powerful driver of economic innovation and long-term value creation. Despite escalating anti-immigrant sentiment and increased enforcement activities, immigrants—documented and undocumented alike—make substantial contributions to the U.S. tax base, labor force, consumer demand, and entrepreneurship. Immigrants paid $652 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2023¹, equivalent to 2.3% of U.S. GDP and more than the entire economies of countries like Belgium or Argentina. This capital is vital for public infrastructure, schools, healthcare, and retirement systems. Notably, undocumented immigrants pay a higher average effective tax rate than the top 1% of households.²
Investors Applaud the FTC’s Ban of Non-Compete Agreements, Safeguarding the Rights of Low- and Middle-Income Workers
Zevin Asset Management and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) today welcomed the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) passage of a ban on non-compete agreements (noncompetes), after having submitted a comment letter last year to the FTC, backed by investors representing $436B in assets, in support of the proposed ban back in April of 2023.
Unleashing Impact Through Gender Lens Investing
Gender lens investing offers investors a process for identifying and weighing issues pertaining to gender-based issues — pay equity, gender diversity, and career advancement, to name a few. We integrate these findings into our investment decision-making with the goal of mitigating risk, identifying opportunities, and creating positive social impact.
Gender equity, while an important aspect of Zevin Asset Management’s research and impact process, is a part rather than the sum of our approach. Given the overlap between the issues we work on in addition to gender equity, such as racial equity and climate change mitigation, we do not view these issues in isolation. Instead, we employ multiple lenses in our investment approach and look for intersectionality between these areas to help us better understand and address inequities in our systems and institutions.
Investing with a Racial Equity Lens
Zevin Asset Management was founded on the belief that active investors have an important role to play in advocating for social and environmental progress. Since our founding in 1997, we have widened our panorama of risk and opportunity by conducting research on corporate environmental, social, and governance-related impacts to inform our investment approach. Through active ownership, we encourage companies to adopt more sustainable business practices that we believe make sense in the long term.
We describe racial equity investing as a lens applied to companies to identify and change inequitable policies, practices, and behaviors to advance meaningful racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion. We accomplish our work through research and stakeholder collaboration, shareholder engagements, submission of shareholder proposals, proxy voting, and public policy outreach and support.
Root Out Impact Washing in Your Portfolio
Time and time again, I am disappointed to see the actively blurred lines between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, values-aligned investing, and impact. By conflating these concepts, investors who are intent on making a difference with their investments are often misled. Taken in by false promises of the positive change their investments can create, investors can be persuaded by impact washing to allocate assets to products or strategies that do not actively create change.