The youth vote played a crucial role in Joe Biden becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since 1996. Sociologists Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, Nathan D. Martin, Angela A. Gonzales, and Emir Estrada will build on research conducted from 2020-2023 as part of the RSF-funded Arizona Youth Identity Project to examine how young adults’ social and political identities develop over the 2024 presidential election. They will conduct two online surveys, a photovoice exercise, and in-depth interviews before and after the 2024 presidential election for their study.

Childcare is a major expense faced by families with children in the United States. However, the Supplemental Poverty Measure – the current approach for measuring poverty rates – inadequately calculates families’ needs and resources. Sociologist Christopher Wimer, public policy scholar Jane Waldfogel, and economist Robert Hartley will create and estimate a childcare-inclusive poverty measure that reflects the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences’ 2023 report on improvements to the measurement of poverty.

Nearly half of the states in the U.S. have recently passed laws automating criminal record expungement. However, an unintended consequence of these laws is that non-citizens no longer have access to records they are required to produce in immigration proceedings when facing removal or seeking a change in legal status. Sociologist Sarah Lageson will investigate how court actors experience automated expungement policies and the impact of these policies on removal outcomes for non-citizens facing deportation.

Firm-level earning differences (i.e., the sorting of women and men between firms with different earnings premiums, due to prestige, market share, or other factors) is an understudied factor of the gender pay gap. Sociologist Thomas DiPrete will examine the extent to which firm-level earnings differences contribute to the gender wage gap. He will analyze restricted-access Census data, data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, the Census Household Composition Key, and the American Community Survey for his study.

The polarization of the two major political parties in the U.S. has made voting harder for voters who are ideologically cross-pressured – those with liberal positions on some issues and conservative positions on others. Sociologists Delia Baldassarri and Stuart Perrett will examine how cross-pressured voters navigate the 2024 election. They will conduct survey experiments for their study.

Contact with the criminal justice system has implications for post-release outcomes, including unemployment, earnings, and health. Two nationally-representative longitudinal studies—the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) – have been essential to researchers. However, they currently do not differentiate between prison and jail incarceration.

Immigrants and children of immigrants comprise 13-percent of veterans. Yet very little has been written on their experiences in the military. Sociologist Amy Lutz will explore the experiences of immigrants and children of immigrants in the military and their motivations for joining the military. She will analyze in-depth interviews with immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigration who have served or are currently serving in the military.

While racial disparities in crime have been a central issue in criminological research, there has been a notable lack of attention given to the changing landscape of racial inequality in experiencing crime over time and its impact on different generations. Sociologist Yunmei (Iris) Lu will investigate the shifting Black-White gap in experiencing crime across generations. She will analyze data from the Monitoring the Future survey, the American Community Survey, the National Institute of Corrections, and the FBI for her study.

Today, about one-third of college students in the U.S. are of recent immigrant origins (students who are immigrants themselves or who have immigrant parents) and about one-quarter are first-generation collegegoers. These are not mutually exclusive populations, yet little research focuses on the intersections of these important characteristics. Sociologist Phoebe Ho will examine the experiences of first-generation immigrant origin students and how these experiences impact educational and employment outcomes.

Crimmigration is a penal system that combines immigration enforcement with the criminal legal system. While some studies investigate how crimmigration affects Latinx immigrants, less is known about the experiences of Black immigrants. Sociologist Akiv Dawson, criminology and criminal justice scholar Miltonette Craig, and sociologist and criminal justice scholar Marie Jipguep-Akhtar will examine the experiences of Black immigrants and how crimmigration impacts their integration into the U.S.