The UC Davis Center for Poverty & Inequality Research
mission is to facilitate non-partisan academic research on
poverty in the U.S., disseminate this research, and train
the next generation of poverty scholars. Our research agenda
includes four themed areas of focus: labor markets and poverty,
children and intergenerational transmission of poverty, the
non-traditional safety net, and immigration.
In a recent study, we explored whether Black students benefit from being matched to a Black teacher. Specifically, we examined whether it affects the likelihood of them being identified for gifted education programs or special education services.
We found that while access to Black teachers does not affect students’ likelihood of gifted identification, Black students matched to Black teachers are less likely to be identified for special education. The results were strongest for Black boys, particularly those who were also economically disadvantaged (ED).
In a recent study, we explored the dependencies between community food security and local food movements. We analyzed 2.97 million pounds of food-bank donations from 296 organizations, conducted network analysis of the local food system with 77 farms and 439 market connections, and carried out interviews with food-bank donors and staff.
August 26, 2024
Letters and Science Magazine
By Alex Russell
Dominic Arreola started taking classes in Chinese in community
college. He quickly gained a passion for the language and the
culture, and by the time he transferred CSU Long Beach he was
steeped in the history and tensions between China and the United
States. He worried more and more about the potential for
war.
In 2012, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) placed strict nutritional requirements on food served at public schools. In a recent study, we explored whether changes to the healthiness of school meals led parents to substitute towards them, away from purchasing meals from supermarkets; and, if so, which households were more willing to do so.
ROCKY Hill, Conn.—Some of the country’s savviest economic trend
predictors spend all day answering call-center phones.
Operators at 211 emergency helplines raised alarm bells about
a baby formula shortage ahead of the headlines about
empty shelves. And they knew that families were defaulting on
their mortgages before the subprime collapse in
2008.
August 26, 2024
Letters and Science Magazine
By Alex Russell
Dominic Arreola started taking classes in Chinese in community
college. He quickly gained a passion for the language and the
culture, and by the time he transferred CSU Long Beach he was
steeped in the history and tensions between China and the United
States. He worried more and more about the potential for
war.
ROCKY Hill, Conn.—Some of the country’s savviest economic trend
predictors spend all day answering call-center phones.
Operators at 211 emergency helplines raised alarm bells about
a baby formula shortage ahead of the headlines about
empty shelves. And they knew that families were defaulting on
their mortgages before the subprime collapse in
2008.
Just as the Republicans’ default solution to any domestic problem
is “lower taxes,” Democrats insist on “more education, especially
college education.” But this obsession with education is
misplaced, and in some cases actually harmful to the project of
building “a more perfect union.” A better tactic for Democrats
would be to raise wages through government policies, especially
those aimed at workers without college educations.
In 2022, Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency(HHSA)
launched the Yolo County Basic Income (YOBI)project and engaged
the UC Davis Center for Regional Change to evaluate the project
via the collection of survey data from YOBI participants. The
YOBI project was designed to address the county’s poverty, which
is ~25%higher than the California rate reported in the 2021
Census.
COVID-19 May Have Been Job Related for One Fourth of
Diagnosed Adults
We catch COVID-19 from each other. The fewer people we
encounter,
the safer we will be. Our desire for fewer encounters was
especially apparent in employment arrangements during the first
two and a half years
of the pandemic. Most workers whom employers allowed to work from
home did so; most whose employers did not allow this reported to
their workplaces.
Objectives: To test for the effects of wages on smoking using
labor unions as instrumental variables. Methods: We analyzed four
waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (2013 to 2019
alternate years). The overall sample included workers aged 18 to
70 years in 2013 and subsamples within blue clerical/white-collar
and private/public sector jobs (N = 37,117 to 8446 person years).
We used two instrumental variables: worker’s union membership and
states’ right-to-work laws.
I am primarily interested in the connections between
schooling and social inequality. In addition to the
Department of Sociology, I am also on the faculty of the Graduate
Group in Education.
A major question that motivates Erin’s research is how inequality
is generated and/or changed through migration and the policies
that regulate migration. Erin has studied:
Children’s development of self-regulation and behavior problems,
how they relate to parents’ mental health and parenting, and
their contributions to mental illness in childhood and
adolescence.
Briana Ballis is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Economics at the University of California-Merced.
Her research interests are in labor economics. Much of her work
focuses on studying the determinants of inequality in education.
Through her work, she seeks to better understand how individuals’
educational investment decisions are shaped by their environments
and backgrounds, and, in particular how policies or programs that
impact vulnerable youth can sere to reduce (or exacerbate)
pre-existing gaps in later life.
Katheryn Russ has expertise in open-economy macroeconomics and
international trade policy. She is a faculty research associate
in the National Bureau of Economic Research International Trade
and Investment Group and Co-Organizer of the International Trade
and Macroeconomics Working Group. She is a Non-Resident Senior
Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and
served as Senior Economist for International Trade and Finance
for the White House Council of Economic Advisors 2015-16.
Robert Faris uses social network analysis to investigate how
health risk behaviors, including bullying, dating violence,
substance use, and delinquency, spread through social ties and
are structured in the social hierarchies of schools.
His recent work shows that adolescents bully their own friends,
as well as schoolmates with whom they share friends, to achieve
higher social status, and examines the moderating role of network
stability in this dynamic.
Rose Kagawa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Emergency Medicine. Dr. Kagawa conducts research on violence
prevention and firearm policy and has particular interest in
understanding how social and environmental contexts influence
violence perpetration and victimization through the life course.
Dr. Au’s research involves the assessment of dietary intakes and
the food environment for the prevention of obesity in low-income,
racially diverse infants and children. Her focus is on
understanding how to promote healthier eating and prevent obesity
in federal nutrition assistance programs, such as the Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children
and the National School Lunch Program.
Noli Brazil received his doctorate in Demography from the
University of California Berkeley in 2013, and is an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Human Ecology. His research and
teaching interests focus on the causes and consequences of
neighborhood inequality. Current research projects include
examining the interactions between neighborhoods and schools,
understanding the determinants of residential mobility and
attainment during young adulthood, and Hispanic US internal
migration.
Dr. Falbe’s research focuses on studying programmatic, policy,
and environmental interventions to prevent chronic disease and
reduce health disparities. Dr. Falbe led an evaluation of the
nation’s first soda tax in Berkeley, California. Her research has
also examined primary care nutrition and physical activity
interventions for youth, healthy retail programs, and
multi-sector community interventions to prevent obesity. Dr.
Falbe received a dual doctorate in Nutrition and Epidemiology in
2013 from Harvard University.
Gail Goodman received her degree in Developmental Psychology from
UCLA in 1977. Her areas of research expertise include welfare
recipients, foster care, and the intergenerational transmission
of attachment insecurity.
Marianne Page is a Professor of Economics and
Co-Director of the Center for Poverty & Inequality Research
at UC Davis. She has authored numerous scholarly articles
focusing on low-income families. A labor economist, she is
an expert on intergenerational mobility and equality of
opportunity in the United States. She has also published on
issues related to the U.S.
1138 Social Sciences & Humanities Building
Davis, CA
Leticia Saucedo received her degree, cum laude, from
Harvard Law School in 1996. Her research centers on employment
and immigration law, immigrants in low-wage workplaces and the
structural dynamics affecting their entry.
Lisa Pruitt’s areas of research include legal and policy
implications of income inequality along the rural-urban continuum
and legal aspects of declining mobility, with an emphasis on
diminishing access to higher education.
Michal Kurlaender’s work focuses on education policy and
evaluation, particularly practices that address existing
racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequality at various stages of
the educational attainment process.
Ross A. Thompson’s research focuses on the applications of
developmental research to public policy concerns, including
school readiness and its development, early childhood
investments, and early mental health.
Paul Hastings received his degree from the University of Toronto.
His research focuses on the impact of stressors on child and
adolescent well-being, and the effects of poverty on
physiological reactivity, regulation and development of mental
and physical health problems.
Cassandra Hart is associate professor of education policy. She
evaluates the effects of school, state and national education
programs, policies, and practices on overall student achievement,
and on the equality of student outcomes. Hart’s recent work
has focused on school choice programs, school accountability
policies, early childhood education policies, and effects on
students of exposure to demographically similar teachers.
She is also interested in the effects of virtual schooling on
student outcomes, both in K-12 and post-secondary settings.
Giovanni Peri received his degree in Economics from UC Berkeley
in 1998. His research focuses on the determinants of
international migrations and their impact on labor markets,
productivity, and investments.
1140 Social Sciences & Humanities Building
Davis, CA
Erin Hamilton studies when, why, and how people migrate, and with
what consequences for migrants, their families, and the
communities they leave and enter. She is currently working on
research projects on legal status, deportation, family and child
migration, and migrant health. She was a Fulbright-Garcia Robles
Scholar at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City in spring 2019.
Erin is the co-author, with Robert Hummer, of Population
Health in America.
