The Center for Distributed Ownership advances research, policy design, and cross-sector coalition building in support of a single proposition: that broad and durable prosperity requires broad and durable ownership of productive capital by ordinary Americans.
The United States Belonging Index score: 27.5 out of 100. Below the OECD median. Below most peer democracies. The lowest it has been since measurement began.
Source: CDO Belonging Index, v1. Data: BLS, Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts, Opportunity Insights, FDIC.
The Center for Distributed Ownership was founded on an empirical observation: every major policy tradition of the last half-century has failed to close the wealth gap. Income transfers, wage supports, tax credits, social insurance — these instruments have cushioned the effects of concentrated capital without altering its distribution. The top 1% of Americans now hold more net wealth than the bottom 50% combined. That is not a political talking point. It is a measurement.
The core argument is structural. When returns to capital consistently exceed returns to labor — as they have in every OECD economy since the 1970s — income policy alone cannot produce broadly shared prosperity. The variable that distinguishes the financially secure from the financially precarious is not what people earn. It is what they own. Ownership is the mechanism. Everything else is management.
We work at the intersection of academic research, policy design, and legislative advocacy to develop the specific mechanisms — capital accounts, worker ownership structures, community land equity, reformed asset taxation — that can distribute ownership at scale without dismantling the market mechanisms that generate the returns worth distributing.
CDO is nonpartisan by design and by conviction. Distributed ownership is not a progressive idea or a conservative one — it is an American one. The homestead, the family business, the mutual aid society, the cooperative bank: these institutions predate the modern left-right divide and have drawn support across it. Our research is designed to be useful to anyone serious about the structural conditions for democratic stability and broadly shared prosperity.
We develop and analyze legislative proposals that would broaden capital ownership at scale: universal capital accounts funded at birth, reformed inheritance and asset tax structures, incentives for broad-based equity compensation, and ownership provisions in public investment frameworks.
We examine the structural barriers that prevent ordinary Americans from building ownership — including the mechanics of compounding, the design of retirement systems, access to equity markets, and the role of patient capital in community wealth formation. We identify policy interventions at each barrier.
We study and support the institutions that distribute ownership at the community level: worker-owned enterprises, community land trusts, employee stock ownership plans, and place-based investment vehicles. These structures are not experiments — they are proven mechanisms operating at insufficient scale.
CDO maintains the Belonging Index — a longitudinal, multi-dimensional measure of economic ownership, civic agency, and community resilience in the United States, tracking 33 indicators from 1920 to the present. It is the empirical backbone of our research program.
The United States scores 27.5 out of 100 on the 2025 Belonging Index — classified as Stable But Hollow. All six dimensions of the index inflect at the same moment: 1978–1982. The Volcker shock. The Powell Memo. The first wave of financial deregulation. The data since has moved in one direction.
For comparison: Denmark scores 83.8. Germany: 71.2. The U.K.: 58.4. No peer democracy scores below the United States.
Explore the full index →Methodology, data sources, and findings from CDO’s longitudinal multi-dimensional index. Composite score: 27.5/100. The 1978–82 inflection point across all six dimensions.
View Publication & Request Report →A global comparative analysis across 20 peer democracies. The United States ranks last among high-income OECD members. Denmark: 83.8. U.S.: 27.5.
Request the Brief →An analysis of capital account proposals across six countries, with design recommendations for a U.S. framework that achieves scale without displacing existing programs.
Request the Brief →A longitudinal analysis of wealth distribution trends and a critique of income-focused policy assumptions across four decades of reform efforts.
Request the Paper →Every year, tens of thousands of small businesses close without a succession plan. The case for worker ownership as the default in federally supported transition programs.
Request the Paper →A century-long analysis of cooperatives, credit unions, mutual insurers, ESOPs, and community land trusts as a share of U.S. economic activity.
Request the Brief →Every week, the CDO Brief delivers one data point worth citing, one policy development worth tracking, and one field story worth knowing — for policymakers, researchers, foundation officers, and journalists working on economic ownership and capital distribution.
For research inquiries, policy collaboration, or press: research@distributedownership.org