Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers. Today, Baby Bonds.

Catherine Edmund, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and

Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with me about these

wealth-building policies, explaining how they work, what we know about the benefits and impacts,

how Trump accounts fit into this whole landscape, and why we could soon be seeing more and

more states enacting these policies. Let's listen. Catherine Edmund,

thank you so much for joining us on Public Health on Call. Would you tell us a little bit about you and your

work? Thank you for having me. My name is Catherine Edmund, and I am an assistant professor

in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health. I study population mental health,

assets, and policies across sectors that can improve assets, which can improve health.

And in my work, we explore policies that help people to earn money, keep money, and grow money.

And we'll talk about that today and how it relates to people's health. Yeah, so specifically we're going to be talking about baby bonds. So tell us what are

baby bonds. How do they work? Baby bonds are publicly funded trust accounts that are established for

children at birth in low-income families. And the goal is to build

long-term wealth and to reduce the wealth gap. So governments can invest a seed amount for eligible

children, which will grow into adulthood. And once children come of age, typically between 18 and 30,

they can use these trust accounts for wealth-building purposes, such as homeownership, education,

...