Co-funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York

Co-funded by JPB Foundation

This project will evaluate the psychosocial consequences of social mobility among Black Americans. Three research questions will be addressed: First, how does social mobility shape goal-striving stress and life satisfaction among Black Americans? Second, does goal-striving stress explain the link between social mobility and life satisfaction? Third, what factors condition the impact of social mobility on goal-striving stress and life satisfaction?

Poor children and children of color have been systematically denied access to the material resources needed for them to thrive. Yet preschool quality hinges on teachers—workers in an industry with high stress, high turnover, and low wages. Further, preschools are segregated by race and class. How does segregation shape teachers' experiences and decisions in preschool classrooms? This project will focus on 60 preschools in Denver, Colorado.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of Latino families, many of whom are not eligible for assistance from federal- and state-level social safety net programs due to their documentation status. This project will employ a mixed-methods study which follows a sample of the Latino population in the New York City metropolitan area, living in mixed-status households, from the early days of the pandemic through Fall 2021 to address the following research questions: 1) How has the U.S.

This study will examine the racial dynamics of trust in schools, with an emphasis on the perspectives of Black youth. Scholars recognize the value of trust for social mobility and collective action, but they overlook trust as a key dimension of educational inequality. Fox-Williams’ previous research demonstrates that student–educator trust is a positive predictor of students’ academic outcomes. However, Black students report the lowest levels of trust in their educators compared to students of other racial groups.

Undocumented status is a significant structural inequality known to constrain immigrant integration and compromise intergenerational mobility. This project will examine how self and parental undocumented status create legal vulnerability and compromise Latinx children of immigrants’ potential for mobility through higher education. Using original survey data collected from 1,862 Latinx undergraduates, Enriquez will investigate differences in mobility potential among: 1) 1.5 generation undocumented immigrants, 2) U.S. citizens with an undocumented parent, and 3) U.S.

Popular notions of U.S. criminal justice invoke prison gates and razor wire. Yet over half of the total correctional population—3.7 million Americans—live under community supervision on probation. 73 percent of all justice-involved women are serving a probation sentence. Despite being the single most common form of punishment, we know little about the lived experiences of women on probation. Often dismissed as a slap on the wrist, the limited scholarship tells us that probation is deeply punitive and hinders opportunities for mobility, especially among poor women and women of color.

Extant research has shown that employment cannot always protect low-income households from uncertainty and volatility, and in some ways may exacerbate it.  This body of work has developed to help us understand the increasing precarity work overall, its underlying causes, and the consequences precarity and work hour insecurity for the well-being of workers and their families. Yet one particular, extreme form of work hour insecurity remains severely understudied—involuntary zero or near-zero work hours.

Blacks are more likely than whites to experience deaths of multiple family members and experience them at earlier ages. While a great deal of alarm has been raised about recent declines in life expectancy among whites, blacks still live on average 4 years less than whites. Yet, little work has analyzed how network deaths contribute to racial inequities in SES. This project seeks to quantify Black-white disparities in familial and household exposure to death, and their relationship to SES.