The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce 24 awards made in the fifth round of its Dissertation Research Grants (DRG) program. Six grants are co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth is providing additional support for four grants. The DRG program supports innovative and high-quality dissertation research projects that address questions relevant to RSF’s priority areas. Applicants can request up to $15,000 in funding. Following is a list of the grant recipients. Please click on each one for a brief description of the research project.

Francisca Alba (Michigan State University) will explore why many EITC recipients in Michigan rely on costly, low-quality tax filing methods over a free, state-provided tax preparation program and test whether providing information about the program can shift their behavior. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Istiakh Ahmed (Northeastern University) will explore how climate-driven flooding, heat, housing insecurity, and displacement in Asheville, North Carolina, reveal unequal racial, economic, and spatial experiences of climate change and the implications for developing fair climate and disaster policies.

Aleli Andres (University of California, San Diego) will use interviews and ethnographic observation to examine how legal status shapes aging and retirement decision making among older Mexican immigrants in San Diego. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Madeline Baird (University of Connecticut) will draw on four years of ethnographic research in Mexico, Panama, and Texas to explore the intersection of U.S. policy and national border enforcement regimes that shape violence, human rights protections, and migrants’ access to social services.

Zohal Barsi (University of Wisconsin, Madison) will use the rise of mail-order kit housing in the early twentieth century to measure how expanded homeownership affected residential tenure, housing values, and intergenerational educational and occupational mobility.

Rebecca Brough (University of California, Davis) will use teacher certification thresholds from the early twentieth century as a natural experiment to estimate how women's entry into the labor market affected their employment, marriage, fertility, and intergenerational outcomes.

Timotej Cejka (University of California, Berkeley) will examine how H-1B visa caps affect hospital staffing and patient care by comparing cap-exempt nonprofit hospitals to other hospitals.

Teresita Cruz Vital (University of California, Berkeley) will use Texas student data to estimate how Dual Language Immersion programs affect academic achievement, graduation, college attendance, and long-term wages, especially for English learners. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Frederick DeVeaux (University of California, Los Angeles) will compile occupational histories for thousands of state legislative candidates and elected legislators to examine how working-class Americans are filtered out of the electoral pipeline and whether the class backgrounds of elected officials shape policy.

Nicolas Florez (University of Michigan) links today’s urban transit disparities to mid-twentieth century Black migration, showing how racial politics designed to limit integration led to fragmented regional transit governance and produced lasting inequalities in access and service.

Kassandra Hernandez (University of California, Berkeley) will use California DREAM Act application data to estimate how Cal Grant eligibility affects undocumented students' college access and integration into higher education. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Rebecca Jack (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) will use data from the competitive 21st Community Learning Center Grants – federal funding targeted at providing afterschool care – to estimate how expanded afterschool care affects mothers’ employment and earnings. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Taylor June (Ohio State University) will examine how homelessness among the LGBTQ+ population across the Midwest is regulated by analyzing how policing, shelter systems, and moral regulation shape the lives of queer and trans people without stable housing.

Darien Kearney (Howard University) will use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (2005–2015) and structural modeling to examine how perceived racial discrimination affects labor market outcomes among Black Americans. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Nathan Ly (Cornell University) will compare U.S. and Canadian migration bureaucracies to show how internal political decisions about processing caseload backlogs determine asylum outcomes and policy consequences over time.

Prateek Mahajan (University of Texas, Austin) will use differences in state foreclosure laws, to explore how excess credit before the 2008 global financial crisis led to foreclosures which inflicted long-term damage on credit profiles and created lasting family and housing-market effects.

Michael Middleton (University of California, Davis) will use a randomized survey to measure public opinion about asylum-seekers versus refugees and undocumented migrants and how attitudes vary by respondents' race.

Bezankeng Njinju (University of Wisconsin, Madison) will examine the impact Wisconsin's 1999 Truth-in-Sentencing law on sentencing length, recidivism, and labor force reentry by comparing individuals whose offense dates fall before and after the law was enacted. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Fadilat Olasupo (University of Michigan) will study Nigerian and Jamaican immigrants in New York City to explore how routine, ostensibly race-neutral policing and institutional practices generate racialized vulnerability to deportation among Black immigrants.

Seyma Ozdemir (University of California, Santa Barbara) will examine how U.S. child-labor laws, which exempt farmwork, makes it possible for children—primarily immigrant—to work instead of attend school, producing entrenched educational inequality. Co-funded with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Aida Pacheco-Applegate (University of Chicago) will study the effects of preschool expansion and wage grants on early care and education providers in Chicago to demonstrate how public investments affect provider stability, service distribution, and equitable access. Additional support provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Natalie Pasquinelli (University of California, Berkeley) will study the impact of remote work, which blurs boundaries between work and home and paid and unpaid labor, on gender inequality in families.

Gabrielle Toborg (University of Pittsburgh) will study how access to warehouse employment, a rapidly expanding sector that disproportionately employs recent immigrants, affects integration, employment, earnings, and economic mobility.

Wenni Yang (University of California, Davis) will use new national data to examine the effects of 1960s-70s medical licensing reforms that removed citizenship requirements for foreign-trained physicians to measure effects on physician integration, hospitals, and public health.