As the economic gap between rich and poor has grown over the past thirty years, a new system of social class differences may be asserting itself in the United States. Several indicators show that the wealthy enjoy better healthcare, better schools, and more political influence than the poorest segment of the population. But there may also be more subtle ways in which social class matters. With support from the Foundation, Annette Lareau, Dalton Conley, Michael Hout, and David Grusky will convene a conference to investigate the hidden workings of social class in America.

Hispanics in the greater Los Angeles area tend to reside in segregated areas. Yet it is difficult to determine whether these high levels of residential segregation result from exclusion or voluntary decisions to remain in certain areas. Recently, sociologist Susan Brown analyzed data from the Russell Sage-supported Immigrant and Inter-generational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) project. She argues that, in some cases, family and social obligations among Mexicans may slow spatial assimilation until the third generation.

Increasingly, legal scholars and empirical social scientists have collaborated to examine social issues and possible legal responses. However, little cooperative work thus far has been done on inequality. As a result, many social scientists have an overly simplistic view of the law’s ability to be put in place, interpreted effectively, and used to combat inequality. At the same time, legal scholars have a poor grasp on the empirical research done on inequality.

For young African-American men, incarceration is now more common than attending college or serving time in the military. In fact, over the past thirty years, the portion of the population involved with the U.S. correctional system at some point in their lives grew seven-fold to include 6 percent of the total adult male population and 25 percent of all African-American men. Although the population most visibly affected by the increase in incarceration is that of the black urban poor, the prison boom has affected, and been affected by, change in the general society.

The combination of “work-first” legislation and a booming economy in the 1990s propelled many poor individuals into employment and off of welfare. But for all too many poor families, marginal gains in income were washed out by new costs for transportation, child care, health insurance, and housing. With support from the Foundation, Carolyn Heidrich, John Karl Scholz, and Thomas Kaplan will organize a multidisciplinary conference in September, 2007 to develop more effective policies for enhancing self-sufficiency and financial independence among the working poor.

New England became a favored destination for Mexican immigrants throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Nontraditional receiving states like Connecticut saw their Mexican population increase by 180 percent. Mexican immigrants arriving in New England find a very different environment than immigrants coming to nontraditional gateways in southern and central states. In North Carolina, for example, Mexican immigrants usually represent the first Latino community in the area.

In November 2004, the Russell Sage Foundation made an award to Alejandro Portes and Cristina Escobar in support of the Comparative Immigrant Organizations Project (CIOP), a comparative study of organizations serving first-generation Colombian, Dominican, and Mexican immigrants. CIOP collects information on organizations’ origins, membership, and goals and builds on the findings of Portes and others who have demonstrated that the role of immigrant organizations is central to the adaptation and incorporation of immigrants into the host society.

At $4 billion a year, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is the largest source of federal aid to cities, and is targeted at cities with the highest levels of poverty. CDBG originated as part of Nixon’s New Federalism initiative, and replaced funding for several existing urban assistance programs with a single open-ended grant to city governments to use at their discretion. Block grants have become a popular policy tool since then, with proponents arguing that they empower local decision-makers who know best how funds should be spent.

Until the 1980s, few studies challenged the gender ratio “law of migration” set forth by E. G. Ravenstein in the late nineteenth century. Examining British censuses of 1871 and 1881, Ravenstein stated that within-country moves were usually dominated by women while between-country moves were dominated by men. Researchers continued to reiterate Ravenstein’s law throughout most of the twentieth century, until the U.S. Department of Labor finally released a study in 1984 documenting a “remarkable shift” in the gender ratio of migrants.

With the dramatic rise in the U.S. prison population over the past several decades, there has been a concomitant increase in the number of offenders released annually – well over half a million in 2005. Conditions facing recently released prisoners are daunting. Prisoners reenter communities with limited employment opportunities and severely depleted local resources. The chances for committing a crime again are extremely high - about 60 percent within three years of release.