These briefs are short and informative analyses of our research
relating to poverty policies. Policy Briefs deliver our
cutting-edge research directly to policy makers, researchers, and
stakeholders in an accessible format.
In a recent study[1], 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Parents struggling with food insecurity can experience heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. These pressures may negatively affect their parenting, which may in turn affect the behavior of their children. In this study, we investigated the parenting aggravation levels of parents who experienced food insecurity in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We also explored the extent to which such aggravation may be responsible for the link between food insecurity and children’s behaviors.
Housing and utility costs consume the majority of monthly incomes for millions of individuals and families in the United States. Missed payments can result in penalties, utility shutoffs, and evictions. Between 14 and 16 percent of the U.S.
Among OECD countries, the United States has fallen from 1st (in 1990) to 9th (in 2016) in terms of the percentage of working age individuals with a bachelor’s degree.[1] This makes interventions that promote college attendance in the U.S. a top policy priority. The benefits of a college education are widely known.
Preschool interventions are arguably one of the most important
elements of support for poor families. Head Start, a federal
program for children in low-income families administered through
the Department of Health and Human Services, is a case in point.
While research shows a range of benefits lasting beyond preschool
for participants, evidence of the “fade-out” of cognitive gains
of the preschool years and the differential impact of the program
on children with different skill levels in the preschool
population has prompted debate over its efficacy.
Poor children in the United States are less healthy than other
children, which may be a central factor in why poverty persists
across generations. Research approaches that use variation in
public programs let researchers disentangle the effects of a
program itself from other factors. These approaches confirm the
broad benefits of safety net programs that target children’s
health and nutrition. They also suggest that access to these
programs in early life improves children’s economic well-being as
adults, which likely transmits to the next generation.
Hospitals and clinics frequently rely on bicultural healthcare
workers as cultural brokers to offer translation and other
assistance to help low-income immigrant patients overcome
cultural barriers to healthcare. In a new study, we find that
Spanish-bilingual nurses navigate complex relationships with
their Latino patients in medical institutions with assorted
regulations and often limited resources. They do so by developing
diverse care strategies.
In recent years, for-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in
enrollment despite public community colleges being much cheaper.
In a recent study,[1] we sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of
young job applicants who recently completed their schooling to
online job postings in seven major U.S. cities across six
occupational categories to track employer callback rates. We find
no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing
a for-profit college relative to those whose resumes list either
a public community college or no college at all.
Discussions of the safety net available to families in poverty
overwhelmingly focus on government assistance programs. An
additional component of how many families make ends meet is with
support from their private networks, especially from parents,
grandparents, or extended family. For some, this “private safety
net” can support material needs not sufficiently met though
earnings and public assistance.[1] However, some individuals may
lack connections to family members who can provide such support.
Understanding how access to a private safety net varies by group
is key to assessing kin support’s role in alleviating material
hardship.
At the core of debates about Head Start is evidence of its
effectiveness, which has been questioned due to the reduction in
test score gains, known as test score “fade-out”, in the years
following participation. However, short-term test score gains may
not accurately reflect the impacts of the program. A number of
studies suggest that the program yields long-term improvements
that include social, cognitive and physical well-being. These
findings show that, overall, Head Start produces a positive
return on investment.
Despite a near-continuous decline over the past 20 years, the
teen birth rate in the United States continues to be higher than
in other developed countries. Many have advocated for long-acting
reversible contraceptives (LARCs), which are more effective at
preventing pregnancy than more commonly used contraceptives. In a
new study, we
analyze Colorado’s Family Planning Initiative, the first
large-scale policy intervention to improve access to LARCs in the
U.S. We find that the program reduced the teen birth rate by
about five percent, and these effects were concentrated among
Colorado counties with higher rates of poverty.
National efforts to increase college attainment and to address
the nation’s skills gap have focused heavily on community
colleges. Understanding returns to community college programs is
particularly important for low-income students, since nearly half
of low-income students begin their college careers at community
colleges, compared to just 15 percent of high-income students.[1]
Using administrative data from California, we find that
students who earn vocational certificates and degrees see large
earnings gains that vary substantially by course of study.
During the most recent economic recession in the U.S., many
parents lost their jobs. When a parent loses a job, it can impact
their child’s well-being in complex ways. In a new study, we
sought to understand how a parent losing a job affects their
children’s health. We found that after a job loss, an increase in
public coverage offset much of the decrease in private coverage.
In addition, we found almost no effects on children’s use of
routine health care services and no evidence that job loss
negatively affects children’s physical health in the short run.
However, we do find that parental job loss results in a
deterioration of mental health for some children, which may have
negative implications for child health in the long run.
Truancy in California is a pervasive problem that
disproportionately impacts children in high-poverty schools. Our
study examined how school safety and connectedness relate to
truancy in California’s high-poverty middle and high schools.[1]
We found that children who perceive their schools to be unsafe
and feared being in fights were more likely to skip school.[2]
Students who reported that they were more closely connected to
their schools, particularly students who reported having a
teacher or adult who cared about them, were more likely to
attend. School-wide initiatives enhancing both school safety and
connectedness may lead to improved school attendance at
California’s most disadvantaged schools.
A major component of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a mandated
expansion of Medicaid. The law also prescribed cuts to Medicaid
Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments, which subsidize
hospitals with high levels of uncompensated care. For states that
have opted out of Medicaid expansion, Medicaid reimbursements
will not make up for lost DSH payments. However, DSH cuts may
also create additional financial challenges for these hospitals
in opt-in states if Medicaid expansion does not reduce overall
uncompensated care.
In recent years, inner-city school districts have worked to
balance budgets despite funding cuts and unpredictable enrollment
due to demographic changes. While redistricting—the process of
changing school boundaries, closing and/or consolidating
schools—can effectively address budget and enrollment problems,
it can disproportionally affect disadvantaged students and
families.
Public insurance can provide needed medical coverage for those
who cannot afford it. Considering that private insurance is often
bound to employment, a public option could have an impact on the
labor market if it reduces incentives to work.
In July 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown overhauled the
state’s school finance system, which has long been criticized for
its complexity and failure to meet student needs. The prior
system generally did provide more revenues to districts serving
many disadvantaged students, but the new Local Control Funding
Formula (LCFF) dramatically increases the state’s investment in
those districts, and creates a more transparent and
equitable school finance system.
In recent years, ethnic concordance—matching the ethnicity of
healthcare workers to that of their patients—has been promoted as
an important measure for achieving “patient-centered care” for
minority patients in the U.S.
We have gathered policy briefs, podcasts, articles and research
studies related to our conference on college for low-income
students. Learn more here about the difference college makes.
