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Noted Author Releases New Book on Social-Economic Policy Reform

Acclaimed Author Unveils Data-Driven Blueprint for Social-Economic Policy Reform in New Release

Washington, D.C. – November 28, 2025 Award-winning policy analyst and best-selling author Dr. Elena Ramírez today releases “Bridging the Divide: A Practitioner’s Guide to Social-Economic Policy Reform” (PolicyWorks Press, 2025), a 384-page volume that distills two decades of field research across five continents into an actionable framework for legislators, philanthropists, and corporate leaders. The book lands as fresh data show the world’s richest 10 percent now capture 52 percent of all income, up from 46 percent in 2020, according to the OECD’s 2025 Employment Outlook.

Ramírez argues that piecemeal interventions—whether tax tweaks or isolated workforce programs—fail unless they are sequenced inside a broader “equity compact” that aligns fiscal, labor-market, and social-protection policies. Drawing on pilot programs she helped design in Colombia, Kenya, and Finland, she demonstrates how coupling earned-income tax credits with portable benefits and regional innovation clusters can raise labor-force participation among low-income households by up to 18 percent within four years. A granular cost-benefit model in the book projects that every USD 1 invested in such bundled reforms returns USD 3.2 in higher payroll taxes and reduced expenditure on remedial health and criminal-justice services.

“Policymakers no longer have the luxury of choosing between growth and equity; the evidence shows they rise—or fall—together,” said Ramírez. “This book gives leaders a plug-and-play roadmap that has already moved 1.3 million people above the national poverty line in pilot jurisdictions.”

The release arrives amid renewed multilateral focus on inequality. The World Bank’s 2025 Poverty and Shared Prosperity report—released last week—warns that without “predistributive” reforms that raise market incomes for the bottom 40 percent, the global goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 will be missed by at least 37 years. Ramírez leverages that dataset, plus 200 newly harmonized household surveys, to show how digital wage reporting, automatic benefit enrollment, and place-based R&D tax credits can cut the Gini coefficient by 4.5 points without dampening GDP growth.

Early adopters are taking notice. The government of Chile’s Bio-Bío region implemented three of the book’s recommended labor-market matching algorithms in September, resulting in a 12 percent month-over-month drop in long-term unemployment among women aged 25–45. Meanwhile, Detroit’s Office of Innovation is piloting Ramírez’s “Community Equity Bonds” to crowd-fund affordable housing tied to local hiring quotas; initial private-sector buy-in has reached USD 48 million, according to city officials.

About PolicyWorks Press

PolicyWorks Press is an independent, non-partisan publisher specializing in evidence-based policy research. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the house partners with universities, multilateral banks, and grassroots organizations to translate academic findings into practitioner-focused toolkits. Since 2018 its titles have been cited in more than 140 legislative hearings across 28 countries.