The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, or welfare reform, dramatically altered the structure of the safety net for families with children by emphasizing work requirements and time limits to discourage welfare dependency. Prior to the reform, MDRC evaluated many state-run randomized experiments involving over 60,000 welfare recipients.
Public education has long been viewed as the primary mechanism by which children from any socioeconomic background have an opportunity to pursue increased educational attainment. Public elementary education was widely available by 1900. The expanding availability of a high school education in the 20th century increased the percentage of children aged 14-17 years in school from 10 to 70 percent between 1900 and 1940. However, access to quality public education has been unequally distributed.
Social scientists have begun to document the deep roots of American inequality by studying the long-run consequences of historical institutions like slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow. To provide this historical perspective, scholars have linked individual records across time, making considerable progress with data problems such as duplicate records, incomplete fields, inconsistent naming conventions, and selection into surviving records. Examples include linking administrative datasets to the complete-count of the 1880 and 1940 censuses.
- September 2019: Additional funding of $31,444 awarded
Co-funded with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Recent evidence suggests a growth in alternative work arrangements, including contract and contingent or “gig” arrangements.
The election of President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress have led to a renewed push to reform the funding structure of social welfare programs. Using Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) as a model, some Republicans propose to block grant Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
From 1915 to 1970, about six million African Americans migrated from southern states to the industrializing urban centers of the North and West, a movement known as the “Great Migration.” The same parts of the country had also been major destinations for more than 30 million European immigrants from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1920s. Political scientist Vasiliki Fouka will use the newly digitized full count of the U.S.
Co-funded with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Occupational licensing laws and regulations determine who gains employment, what tasks they can perform, and the terms of employment. Scope of practice requirements are a critical component of these licensing regulations because they define the capabilities of practitioners in occupations affected by licensing. Economist Morris Kleiner will examine how scope of practice provisions in state laws determine access to work, with an emphasis on nonstandard work.
Co-funded with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Alternative labor (alt-labor) groups have begun to experiment with modern information communication technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to give workers the information and advice needed to foster getting together online, as well as offline, and to promote collective action regarding employment and working conditions. One such effort is OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart), a labor startup which aims to build collective labor power in Walmart, the nation's largest single employer.
Co-funded with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth