Our policy briefs deliver our cutting-edge research directly to
policy makers, researchers, and stakeholders in an accessible
format. These peer-reviewed resources are short and
informative analyses of our research relating to poverty and
policy.
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.
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.
Food companies pay to ensure their products are displayed at store checkouts, where they are more likely to trigger impulse purchases and child purchasing requests. These products, such as candy, chips and sugar-sweetened beverages, are mostly unhealthy. The first jurisdiction globally to implement a healthy checkout policy is Berkeley, California.
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food packages for children aged one to four years include a cash value benefit (CVB) redeemable for fruits and vegetables with participating vendors. Beginning in June 2021, the CVB value was increased. In a recent study, we evaluated associations of the augmented CVB with the amount and diversity of redeemed fruits and vegetables. We found that the augmented CVB was associated with greater and more diverse purchases of fruits and vegetables.
Economic recession, societal disruption, and nearly seven million lost lives: the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global public health crisis with significant consequences for the social, physical, and psychological development of young people.
In a recent study, we examined academic skills among children from low-income families. Specifically, we tested whether these skills were predicted by various factors including neighborhood cohesion, positive mother–child engagement, child self-regulation in early childhood, and the Family Check-Up (FCU) intervention. We found that higher positive mother–child engagement and child self-regulation predicted higher academic skills at school entry.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused reverberations throughout the educational system that disproportionately impacted students of color and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. We examined the latest research documenting the disparate educational impacts of the pandemic across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic status groups—impacts that deepened existing educational inequities in the U.S. Underlying these disparities were numerous systemic barriers, including disproportionate access to in-person learning and technology alongside the intensification of racial discrimination.
The links between structural and social determinants and mental health are well documented. In a recent review[1], we examined the role of neurobiology in those links, seeking to identify ways in which the practice and application of neurobiological research can help to mitigate disparities and inequities in mental health across diverse marginalized and minoritized racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and economic communities.
The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit (ECTC) provided families with children monthly payments from July 2021 to December 2021. In a recent study, we explored the extent to which these payments were associated which changes in adult overall health or household food security. We found that eligibility for ECTC payments was associated with improvements in both.
In a recent study, we explored the relationship between state-level macrostructural characteristics, such as cost of living and anti-poverty programs, and the magnitude of socioeconomic disparities in brain development and mental health. To do so, we analyzed data covering more than 10,000 children across 17 US states. We found that lower income was associated with smaller hippocampal volume (a brain region involved in learning and memory) and higher internalizing psychopathology (denoting conditions such as depression and anxiety).
The USA maintains the world’s largest immigration detention system. In two recent studies, we examined the health of detained immigrants in California during detention and following release.
In the first study, we examined confinement conditions (including sleep deprivation, social isolation from family via barriers to visitation, witnessing or experiencing abuse or harassment, and barriers to needed physical and mental health care) and found that each condition increased the likelihood of deleterious physical and/or mental health conditions among study participants.
Systemic oppression renders the Latinx community particularly vulnerable to the economic and health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, with psychological consequences for parents and their children. In a recent study, we sought to understand how financial cutbacks and fears of contracting COVID-19 contributed to children’s externalizing behaviors due to increases in maternal stress among low-income Latina mothers. Data were collected from mothers approximately once a month across the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) has been shown to improve birth outcomes. When they reach the age of five, however, children become ineligible to receive it. In a recent study, we examined, for both adults and children, the nutritional and laboratory outcomes of this age-related loss of eligibility. We found little impact on children who aged out of the program, but adult women experienced reduced caloric intake and increased food insecurity.
Precarious work schedules, including last-minute cuts to workers’ shifts, undermine well-being for millions of workers and their families in the United States. In a recent study, we evaluated the extent to which labor regulations can moderate this precarity and its impacts.
Between 2000 and 2015, as the U.S. deported unprecedented numbers of Mexican immigrants, the population of U.S.-born children living in Mexico doubled in size. In a recent study, using data collected in 2014 and 2018 by the Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID), we estimated the number of de facto deported children. De facto deported children are U.S.-born children who emigrated to Mexico from the U.S. to accompany a deported parent.
Place-based policies commonly target disadvantaged neighborhoods for economic improvement, typically in the form of job opportunities, business development or affordable housing. In an attempt to ensure that investment is channeled to truly distressed areas, place-based programs narrow the pool of eligible neighborhoods based on a set of socioeconomic criteria. These criteria, however, may not identify the places most in need. In a recent study, we examined the relationship between neighborhood gentrification status and eligibility for a range of place-based improvement programs.
Social and economic inequality are chronic stressors that continually erode the mental and physical health of marginalized groups, undermining overall societal resilience.
The potential ramifications of food insecurity for the development of children with disabilities are often overlooked in broader policy discussions, despite the fact that such ramifications are likely more significant for these children. In a recent study, I investigated how food insecurity relates to the behavioral outcomes of young school-aged children with disabilities across the first two years of their elementary education. Overall, I found that household food insecurity was related to a significant decline in children’s attentional focus.
Because of large acreages, sparse populations, and distinct sociopolitical dynamics, many rural communities are beginning to assemble their own sets of economic indicators to fit unique policy agendas. In a recent paper, we reviewed over thirty years of practical efforts from six regions that created economic development reports. These reports cover only 60 percent of non-metro counties in the US, with more than half having been issued in the last five years.
Historically, Hispanic families have used means-tested assistance less than high-poverty peers, with anti-immigrant politics and policies potentially acting as a barrier. In a recent study, we documented the participation of Hispanic children in three anti-poverty programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). We compared across age and parental citizenship, and also explored the correlation of participation with state immigrant-based restrictions.
Blame for widespread food insecurity across the U.S. is frequently directed at the prevailing minimum wage. In a recent study, we examined whether and to what extent increases to the minimum wage improved the quantity and nutritional quality of food purchased by minimum-wage earners.
Poverty is a chronic stressor, associated with disruptions in adolescent development. To illuminate those disruptions, we examined associations of chronic poverty and income changes experienced from pre- to mid-adolescence with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress responses in late adolescence.
Disparities in access to healthy food can be partially alleviated by street-food vending. California’s 2018 Safe Sidewalk Vending Act mandates that ordinances cannot regulate street food vendors for reasons beyond public health concerns. In a recent study exploring the overlooked potential of street-food vending, we reviewed municipal ordinances for 58 counties and 213 cities in California. We found that the majority are out of compliance and will need to update regulations.
The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. In a recent study, we investigated the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school-educated Mexican-immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014 using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
As public-school closures have increased in number across U.S. cities, opponents have argued that the closures bring many negative consequences, such as greater local crime rates. In a recent study of the 2013 Chicago mass school closure, during which 49 elementary schools were shut, I tested this claim. Looking at each school’s status after closure (vacant, repurposed, or merged with an existing school), I found that vacancy and repurposing into a non-school were associated with decreased crime.
I investigated the maltreatment profiles of child welfare–involved children in special education, examining how those profiles influenced their internalizing and externalizing behaviors. I analyzed data on a sample of 290 children representing approximately 233,000 children involved in the child welfare system and in special education. In doing so, I applied a range of measures, including the poverty level, mental health and marital status of caregivers.
How does prolonged exposure to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) affect children’s diet quality? In a recent study, we examined the association between duration of WIC participation and diet quality of 24-month-old children. We found that WIC participation duration was significantly associated with diet quality. Children in the high-duration group had significantly higher Healthy Eating Index 2015 total scores (59.3) than children in the low-duration group (55.3).
Though immigration policymaking has traditionally occurred at the federal level, it is increasingly prevalent at sub-national levels, too. In a recent study, we examined the adoption of these policies at the county level in the United States. Specifically, we considered the implementation of migrant labor market regularizations (LRs) between 2004 and 2014. LRs affect aspects of migrant workers’ status in labor markets and include laws and ordinances related to anti-solicitation, language access, local enforcement of federal immigration law, and employment verification.
A decade after it passed into law, a majority of Americans now support the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In a recent study, I investigated whether the policy itself, through its beneficiaries, changed public opinion and sowed the seeds of its own defense against efforts to repeal it. I found that individuals who enrolled in plans on the health insurance marketplaces had significantly more positive opinions of the ACA after implementation.
Across the United States, the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are much greater for already disadvantaged people. The health and economic burdens faced by people experiencing homelessness make them especially vulnerable.[1] This vulnerability has been heightened further by the widespread curtailing of crucial services for people experiencing homelessness following COVID-19 outbreaks at temporary shelters.
Systemic oppression makes the Latino community especially vulnerable to the economic, health, and psychological risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Latina mothers, in particular, must navigate the pandemic from their racialized, gendered, and classed positions while caring for children and families. In a recent study, conducted during California’s initial shelter-in-place mandate (March 20 – June 1, 2020), we surveyed 70 Latina mothers from Sacramento and Yolo Counties. We assessed stress, depressive symptoms, and anxiety symptoms among these women.
Among disadvantaged groups, rates of postsecondary enrollment are disproportionately low, with undocumented immigrants facing particularly high barriers to college. In a recent study, we investigated the effects of a decrease in Colorado college tuition on college application and enrollment behavior. Specifically, we used student-level data to analyze a law that granted in-state tuition to certain undocumented students residing in Colorado. We found an increase in the credit hours and persistence of newly enrolled and likely undocumented students in the period after the law was introduced.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) sought to improve access and affordability of health insurance. Most ACA policies targeted childless adults; the extent to which these policies also positively impacted families with children has been unclear. In a recent study, we aimed to examine changes in health care-related financial burden for US families with children before and after the ACA, based on income-eligibility for ACA policies. Using a difference-in-differences design in a cohort of U.S.
Children growing up in economically disadvantaged contexts are at risk of underperforming academically. Why is this? One explanation may be underdeveloped ‘executive function’, an important collection of attention-regulation skills. Executive function is malleable in childhood, indeed—interventions have been effective in improving it, especially among children facing adversity. In a recent study, we set out to examine whether early-life family income predicted long-term academic achievement, and to investigate the role of executive function in explaining this association.
When young adults (YAs) move out of the family home, they often find themselves in a neighborhood that differs considerably from the one in which they grew up. What are the implications of this kind of residential mobility during this particular phase of life? In a recent study, we examined movement in and out of disadvantaged and advantaged neighborhoods as individuals leave home and experience significant life-course events.
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.
Conditions of confinement in immigrant detention facilities make them a ticking time bomb for COVID-19 infections. The health risks are dire and urgent, but federal and state governments can still take legal action to prevent infections, flatten the curve, and save lives.
While the spread of the novel coronavirus is affecting different regions and populations to different extents, one thing is clear: people experiencing homelessness are especially susceptible to both the virus and the disease it can cause (COVID-19). This is due in part to the high concentration of people experiencing homelessness in urban and coastal regions with high infection rates. It is also true that, compared to the general population, people experiencing homelessness suffer from more health conditions and are less able to access health care.
A person’s risk for developing psychosis-spectrum disorders such as schizophrenia in adulthood is determined by multiple factors. With this in mind, we examined the risk for the development of such disorders in a two-generation, 30-year prospective longitudinal study of 3,905 urban families in Montréal, Canada. This study took place against a sociocultural backdrop of changing economic and social conditions.
Uninsurance for young adults (YAs) was greatly reduced by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But were federal health reforms since 2010 equally beneficial for all YAs? Did certain policies exacerbate, rather than resolve, preexisting disparities in health-insurance coverage? In a recent study, using a nationally representative sample of more than 350,000 participants, we investigated inequalities in YA insurance coverage before and after federal health reforms, including the expansions of dependent coverage, Marketplaces and Medicaid.
Food assistance is a large part of the food economy, with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) redemptions totaling $76 billion in 2013, representing more than 10 percent of sales at supermarkets. Such assistance is important to the millions of Americans who depend on it. Less clear until now has been how food assistance shapes the retail food environment. In a recent study, we set out to find out whether the rollout of Food Stamps during the 1960s and 1970s affected the retail environment.
California’s housing crisis stems from an inadequate supply of affordable housing coupled with insufficient legal protections for renters and homeowners. The resulting access-to-justice challenge for low-income and modest-means residents is aggravated in rural areas by the underfunding of legal-aid organizations and the state’s rural lawyer shortage. All of these factors contribute to recent increases in the state’s homeless population. Free, high-quality Legal Aid is needed urgently. We recommend the passing of new laws that protect rural low-income renters and homeowners.
Parental divorce is generally associated with unfavorable outcomes for children, particularly with regard to education. But not every divorce is equally harmful for the children it affects. Why is this? In a recent study, we found that parental divorce does lower educational attainment, but only for children whose parents are statistically unlikely to separate. For these children, divorce is an unexpected shock to an otherwise privileged childhood.
Medicaid covers more than 72 million enrollees and represents over $500 billion in government spending annually. But does it improve the health of its beneficiaries? In a recent study, we investigated the relationship between Medicaid enrollment and mortality. To do so, we compared changes in mortality for near-elderly adults with low incomes in states that did and did not expand Medicaid eligibility through the Affordable Care Act. We found a decline of 0.132 percentage points in annual mortality associated with Medicaid expansion for this population.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) serves more than one-quarter of pregnant and postpartum women in the United States. In October 2009, the WIC food package underwent revisions to improve nutritional content. In a recent quasi-experimental study of more than two million California infants, we investigated the extent to which those revisions—which increased access to whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and low-fat milk—resulted in improvements in maternal and infant health.
Economic hardship during childhood contributes to worse mental and physical health across the lifespan. Over the past decade, researchers have begun to highlight the behavioral and biological pathways that underlie these disparities, and to identify protective factors—supportive relationships, for example—that mitigate against their occurrence. In this brief, we summarize some of this recent research and the new challenges it presents. We also make suggestions to inform both policy and practice for youth experiencing economic hardship.
Living in “deep poverty” means living on an income less than half the official poverty threshold, or, for a family of three in 2017, living with annual income of less than $9758. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 18.5 million individuals in the United States—5.7 percent of the population—lived in deep poverty in 2017. At such low levels of income, it may be particularly important to understand for how long individuals continue to live in deep poverty. My recent study investigates the long-term persistence of deep poverty. While most spells of deep poverty in the U.S.
