In this pamphlet, reprinted from the Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Congress of the Playground Association of America, Joseph Lee discusses the ideal home playground.
JOSPEH LEE is considered the “Father of the Playground Movement.” He is the author of “Play and Playgrounds,” available on the Russell Sage Foundation site.
This booklet provides advice on reforming Independence Day celebrations. It includes illustrated descriptions of safe celebrations; a list of state laws and city ordinances regulating the manufacture, sale, and use of explosives; and a collection of programs and suggestions.
LEE F. HANMER was associate director of the Department of Child Hygiene at the Russell Sage Foundation.
This report, by the Russell Sage Foundation’s Department of Child Hygiene, provides an account of the department’s activities and lists its pamphlets and books, as well as the foundation’s other publications.
Algorithms–rules written into software–shape key moments in our lives: from who gets hired or admitted to a top public school, to who should go to jail or receive scarce public benefits. Today, high stakes software is rarely open to scrutiny, but its code navigates moral questions: Which of a person’s traits are fair to consider as part of a job application? Who deserves priority in accessing scarce public resources, whether those are school seats, housing, or medicine? When someone first appears in a courtroom, how should their freedom be weighed against the risks they might pose to others?
Policymakers and the public often find algorithms to be complex, opaque and intimidating—and it can be tempting to pretend that hard moral questions have simple technological answers. But that approach leaves technical experts holding the moral microphone, and it stops people who lack technical expertise from making their voices heard. Today, policymakers and scholars are seeking better ways to share the moral decisionmaking within high stakes software — exploring ideas like public participation, transparency, forecasting, and algorithmic audits. But there are few real examples of those techniques in use.
In Voices in the Code, scholar David G. Robinson tells the story of how one community built a life-and-death algorithm in a relatively inclusive, accountable way. Between 2004 and 2014, a diverse group of patients, surgeons, clinicians, data scientists, public officials and advocates collaborated and compromised to build a new transplant matching algorithm – a system to offer donated kidneys to particular patients from the U.S. national waiting list.
Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, unpublished archives, and a wide scholarly literature, Robinson shows how this new Kidney Allocation System emerged and evolved over time, as participants gradually built a shared understanding both of what was possible, and of what would be fair. Robinson finds much to criticize, but also much to admire, in this story. It ultimately illustrates both the promise and the limits of participation, transparency, forecasting and auditing of high stakes software. The book’s final chapter draws out lessons for the broader struggle to build technology in a democratic and accountable way.
DAVID G. ROBINSON is a visiting scholar at the Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the faculty at Apple University. From 2018 to 2021, he developed this book as a Visiting Scientist at Cornell’s AI Policy and Practice Project. Earlier, Robinson co-founded and led Upturn, an NGO that partners with civil rights organizations to advance equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of digital technology.
Preemption is when a higher level of government eliminates or reduces the authority of a lower level of government. Since 2010, preemption has increasingly been used by state governments to intentionally thwart local action or punish localities for implementing progressive policies that would disproportionately benefit Black and Latinx workers. Preemption targeting worker-related local policies is most common in the South and is tied to a history of state sanctioned efforts to impede political and economic power among people of color.
This paper, a revised 1917 edition of a 1913 report published by the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation, offers concise advice on early child-rearing to expectant mothers.
Frances Sage Bradley was chairman for Georgia of the Committee for Public Health Education Among Women of the American Medical Association and state chairman, Publich Health Committee, Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs.
Political scientist Matthew Baum and his colleagues hypothesize that the COVID-19 pandemic will permanently change the trajectory of our social, economic, and political systems. They will conduct two additional monthly surveys in a series of state surveys conducted since April 2020 with previous NSF support. The January and March 2021 monthly waves will capture opinions, behaviors, and circumstances in the post-election period.
The threat of COVID-19 increased the health risks of entering some workplaces, leading many employers to offer and many workers to take up remote work options. While the extent of remote work has significantly increased, there is considerable variation across industries, with remote work more common in industries with better educated and better paid workers and with younger people. Importantly, some employers expect that remote work will remain an option after the COVID-19 crisis ends.
Co-funded by JPB Foundation
With each depression emergency measures are embarked upon—and the results generally forgotten. This study recovers and records significant experience in previous depressions for its bearing upon present and future policies. Published in 1936.
Leah H. Feder was associate professor of applied sociology at Washington University.
