The Fall 2012 issue of Pathways, a magazine produced by the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, features several RSF-funded briefs on the social fallout of the Great Recession. The reports are part of the Foundation's Great Recession initiative, which has funded more than two dozen projects in the last two years that will assess the effects of the Great Recession on the economic, political, and social life of the country.

Here are brief descriptions of the articles in Pathways:

Douglas S. Massey: The Great Decline in American Immigration?

Immigration has been a major component of demographic change in the United States over the past several decades, constituting at least a third of U.S. population growth and up to half of labor force growth in any given year. By any standard, it is a central feature of the nation’s political economy and thus especially important to monitor as the Great Recession plays out. This brief reviews levels and patterns of immigration to the United States over the past three decades, with a particular focus on their implications for the nation as it recovers from the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

Christopher Uggen: The Crime Wave That Wasn't

This brief review of statistics before and since the Great Recession’s onset provides clear evidence for a decline in crime from 2007 to 2010. It also shows a consistent, albeit less steep, drop over that period in most correctional populations. To date, then, there is little evidence that great numbers of people have “turned to crime” in response to economic recession.

Sarah Burgard: Is the Recession Making Us Sick?

We pose the following questions: Is the recession lowering the aggregate level of physical well-being in the U.S.? Is it lowering the aggregate level of mental wellbeing? How has access to health care changed, if at all, with the recession?

S. Philip Morgan, Erin Cumberworth, and Christopher Wimer: Sheltering the Storm: American Families in the Great Recession

The decision to have a baby, to form or end a union, and to return to the nest are all family behaviors that might be sensitive to economic downturns. Is the recession indeed changing the family? And are "red" and "blue" families reacting differently?

You can read the Pathways issue for free. Our new website, Recession Trends, also features additional reports that analyze trends in domains such as income, consumption, housing and more.