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.
Our Center was founded in 2011 as one of three federally
designated Poverty Research Centers. As our Center has grown over
the past nine years, so too has our research agenda, expanding
beyond a strict focus on poverty to include overlapping
dimensions of social and economic inequality. Today, Center
affiliates’ research contributes to our understanding of the
causes and consequences of, and solutions to, economic
disadvantage as it relates to race and ethnicity, geospatial
context, gender, immigrant status, and disability.
In 2014, Berkeley, California became the first US jurisdiction to tax distribution of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). In a recent study, we interviewed city stakeholders and SSB distributors and retailers and analyzed records in order to identify lessons learned from the implementation of this tax. Our findings emphasized the importance of investing tax revenues back into the community through programs that advance health equity.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented in 2012, granted a subset of undocumented youth temporary relief from deportation, as well as work authorization and other benefits. In a recent study, we analyzed both whether and how DACA impacted education and employment among undocumented immigrants in California. We found mixed effects. DACA enabled college for some, but discouraged it for others. DACA recipients perceived substantial occupational mobility, but for many, this was not reflected in movement out of the secondary labor market.
The COVID-19 crisis has hit low-income families especially hard. Unemployment rates have risen highest for those with lower levels of education, and for Black and Hispanic individuals. In response, the Families First Coronavirus Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act have made important provisions in response. Still, many are suffering, and tremendous need remains unmet. Food insecurity rates have increased almost three times over pre-COVID rates.
COVID-19 has created a $54 billion budget deficit for California. This has significant implications for K-12 school districts. It also has the potential to harm high-poverty districts more severely. To balance the budget while averting draconian education cuts, the state’s recently enacted 2020-21 budget defers nearly $11 billion of school district state aid. This forces districts to borrow in order to maintain staffing and educational programs.
Congratulations to previous participants in our Visiting Graduate
Student program on the publication of their paper. Kathryn
Edwards, Jennifer Scott, and Alex Stanczyk met in 2014 through
the Center for Poverty and Inequality Research’s Visiting
Graduate Student program. They recently published “Moonlighting
to the Side Hustle: The Effect of Working an Extra Job on
Household Poverty for Households With Less Formal
Education,” a paper they began working on during our
program. Read the paper published in Families in Society: The
Journal of Contemporary Social Services below.
Third grade teacher Alena Anberg cruised down Highway 99 in her
Ford F-150, past acres of almond orchards that split the terrain
just outside her hometown of Arbuckle in Colusa County. She grew
up in this town of 3,000 and knows the back roads well, which
helped as she made several stops to deliver iPads, laptops and
old smart phones with SIM cards installed to turn them into Wi-Fi
hot spots.
Our Center was founded in 2011 as one of three federally
designated Poverty Research Centers. As our Center has grown over
the past nine years, so too has our research agenda, expanding
beyond a strict focus on poverty to include overlapping
dimensions of social and economic inequality. Today, Center
affiliates’ research contributes to our understanding of the
causes and consequences of, and solutions to, economic
disadvantage as it relates to race and ethnicity, geospatial
context, gender, immigrant status, and disability.
The goal of this UCOP-funded pilot program on Child Health,
Poverty and Public Policy is to lay the foundation for a UC-wide
network of scholars who are committed to rigorous cross-training
in multiple disciplinary-specific skills and “languages” that are
necessary to produce a comprehensive understanding of the
mechanisms by which health and nutrition programs (e.g.
Although a growing number of studies suggest that providing poor
families with income supplements of as little as $1,000 per
year will improve children’s well-being, many poor children
miss important sources of income support provided through the tax
system because their parents either do not work or do not
file taxes. Accessing assistance through means-tested programs is
also challenging.
Do mothers’ biological responses to stress transfer to her child?
This is a question addressed in a recently published study by
Leah Hibel of UC Davis and Evelyn Mercado of UCLA. Though prior
reports have shown that mothers help their children regulate
distress through calming and soothing, there are few studies that
examine the ways in which a mother facing stress might transmit
stress to her child. This study shows that mothers transmit
stress to their infants and that mothers’ emotions appear to play
a role in this transmission.
Exclusionary immigration policies have led to a sizeable
undocumented population that is largely barred from access to
resources in the United States, however there is little research
that looks at the impact of legal status on immigrants’
psychological wellbeing.
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.
Jasmine E. Harris earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and her
A.B. from Dartmouth College. Professor Harris’s research
focuses on the role of disability rights in the overall
antidiscrimination agenda. She uses procedural laws and
interdisciplinary research to consider how law can advance social
norms of disability. Her articles have appeared in such
leading legal journals as the Columbia Law Review, New York
University Law Review, Ohio State Law Review, and American
University Law Review. Professor Harris is also a faculty
affiliate of the Aoki Center on Race and Nation Studies.
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 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
This event will allow attendees to engage in cutting edge
research on important issues related to race, ethnicity, and
economic inequality in higher education. The panel will include
research on the college admissions process, affirmative action
policies, and college persistence.
