Thirteen new research projects in the Russell Sage Foundation’s Behavioral Economics, Social Inequality, Immigration, and the Future of Work programs were recently funded at the Foundation’s November 2014 meeting of the Board of Trustees.

The Foundation’s Behavioral Economics program supports research that incorporates the insights of psychology and other social sciences into the study of economic behavior. The following projects were recently funded under the program:

Pilot Study of Lending Circles and Financial Inclusion among Lower-Income Immigrants and Minorities: The Mechanisms of Behavior Change
Frederick Wherry (Yale University), Kristin Seefeldt (University of Michigan), Anthony Alvarez (California State University, Fullerton)

Sociologists Frederick Wherry, Kristin Seefeldt and Anthony Alvarez will carry out and analyze in-depth interviews with 40 low-income immigrants and minorities participating in lending circles in San Francisco, focusing on the mechanisms that lead to greater participation in mainstream financial services and the impact of lending circles on how these groups make financial decisions and build assets and credit.

The Psychology of Scarcity
Eldar Shafir (Princeton University), Anuj Shah (University of Chicago), Abby Sussman (University of Chicago), Jiaying Zhao (University of British Columbia)

Psychologists Eldar Shafir, Anuj Shah, Abby Sussman, and Jiaying Zhao will design interventions that examine the causal links between the psychological burdens of poverty, cognitive bandwidth in low-income individuals, and performance and decision-making.

The Foundation’s Future of Work program examines the causes and consequences of the deteriorating quality of low-wage jobs in the United States. Projects sponsored by the program have examined a wide range of causal factors, from foreign outsourcing and immigration to the decline of unions and technological change, that may have depressed wages of low-education workers. The following projects were recently funded under the program:

Offshoring and the Future of Work: New Evidence from Global Production and Employer-Employee Microdata
Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), Kyle Handley (University of Michigan)
Jointly funded with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation

Handley and Bloom will investigate the impact of offshoring on U.S. firms and workers, linking new detailed data on U.S. establishments over time with international-level data on firm ownership and financial characteristics.

Precarious Work Schedules among Early Career Adults in the U.S.
Susan J. Lambert and Julia R. Henly (University of Chicago)
Jointly funded with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation

Lambert and Henly will explore the ways in which work schedules facilitate or hinder early-career workers’ efforts to arrange caregiving, pursue an education, secure a second job, maintain meaningful relationships, and earn an adequate income. They will use new data to examine the different dimensions of work schedules (such as fluctuating hours, schedule control, and unsocial timing of work) and identify personal and occupational factors that place individuals and couples at risk for unstable work schedules.

Stepping Stones or Dead Ends? The Changing Occupational Structure and its Impact on the Mobility of Low-Wage Workers in the United States, 1996-2012
Ted Mouw and Arne L. Kalleberg (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Jointly funded with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Sociologists Ted Mouw and Arne Kalleberg will analyze the conditions under which low-wage workers achieve upward mobility, looking at how occupation-related skills—and changes in the demand for those skills—are associated with “moving up” occupation-based pathways or “ladders.”

The Foundation’s Social Inequality program examines the social and political consequences of rising economic inequality. Recently, the program has turned to in-depth examinations of public education and intergenerational social mobility, funding projects that examine access to early education, growing wealth disparities in the U.S., and the effects of household wealth on child development, among others. The following projects were funded under the Social Inequality program:

Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality
Michael Carr and Emily Wiemers (University of Massachusetts, Boston)

Professors Michael Carr and Emily Wiemers will investigate the link between earnings instability and earnings inequality, using new data to analyze trends in earnings instability and looking at how year-to-year earnings volatility changes over time to affect income inequality overall.

Inequality, Issue Salience, and Policy Responsiveness: A Comparative Study of the Politics of Inequality in the United States and the United Kingdom
Taeku Lee (University of California, Berkeley), Pepper Culpepper (European University Institute)
Jointly funded with the MacArthur Foundation

Professors Taeku Lee and Pepper Culpepper will investigate the extent to which business interests influence public policy, and the potential of public opinion to constrain that influence. They will systematically examine the conditions under which public opinion works as a credible incentive for lawmakers to discount the power and interests of business.

Does Attending an Elite University Help Low Income Students? Evidence From the Texas Longhorn and Texas A&M Century Scholars Program
Scott Imberman (Michigan State University), Michael Lovenheim (Cornell University), Rodney Andrews (University of Texas, Dallas)

Imberman, Lovenheim and Andrews will study the effects of programs implemented by the University of Texas and Texas A&M University that were designed to increase the enrollment and academic success of low-income students.

The Role of Private Schooling in Contributing to the Increase in Inequality of Educational Outcomes between Children from Low- and High-Income Families
Richard Murnane (Harvard University), Sean Reardon (Stanford University)
Jointly funded with the MacArthur Foundation

Murnane and Reardon will analyze trends in private schooling (including homeschooling), looking at private school enrollment by type of school and by family income; changing trends in how much families pay for private school; and how private school enrollment is associated with increased inequality of educational outcomes between children from high- and low-income families.

Price Deregulation and Equality of Opportunity in Higher Education
Kevin M. Stange (University of Michigan), Rodney Andrews (University of Texas, Dallas)

Stange and Andrews will examine the consequences of tuition deregulation in Texas, focusing on how this deregulation has affected the representation of more disadvantaged students in higher quality institutions and high-return majors.

The Revolving Door in Financial Regulation: Elite Networks and the Consequences of Unequal Access on Policymaking
Kevin Young and Bruce Desmarais (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Young and Desmarais will use social network analysis and new data to study the “revolving door” phenomenon in American politics, offering an analysis of the influence of lobbying firms on politics and analyzing the extent to which the variability in interest group influence can be explained by the different relationships that are implied by the revolving door hypothesis.

The Foundation’s Immigration program examines the social, economic, political, and community changes in the context of contemporary immigration and the role of race, nativity and legal status on the prospects for integration of immigrants and their children. Programs recently funded in this program include:

Are Barrios Good or Bad? The Effects of Metropolitan Area Segregation On Hispanic Access to Opportunity
Ingrid Gould Ellen (New York University)
Jointly funded with the MacArthur Foundation

Ingrid Gould Ellen and two research fellows will study whether native-born Hispanics residing in more segregated metropolitan areas tend to fare better or worse—in terms of high school and college graduation, employment rate and earnings, English language proficiency and the likelihood of being an unmarried mother—than Hispanics who live in less segregated areas.

Migrants and the Making of America
Nathan Nunn (Harvard University), Nancy Qian (Yale University), Sandra Sequeira (London School of Economics)
Jointly funded with the MacArthur Foundation

Economists Nathan Nunn, Nancy Qian and Sandra Sequeira will study the very long-run impacts of immigration, exploring how immigrant outcomes today might be connected to patterns of immigration in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and whether counties that historically had more immigrants are systematically different today than counties that had less immigration.