Several new research projects in the Russell Sage Foundation’s Social Inequality and the Future of Work programs were funded at the Foundation’s June meeting of the Board of Trustees.

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:

The Boston Reentry Study
Bruce Western (Harvard University)

Western will research how people reenter society after being incarcerated, including whether the stigmatizing effects of having a criminal record vary by race, ethnicity, and gender; whether social integration differs for those who have experienced violence or trauma, those with histories of drug and alcohol problems, or those who suffer from mental illness; and the dynamics of prisoner reentry during the first year, especially with regard to employment, supervision, and social relationships.

Jointly funded with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

The Marcellus Shale Income Gains (MSIG) Natural Experiment
Molly Martin (Pennsylvania State University), Diane McLaughlin (Pennsylvania State University), Kelly Davis (Pennsylvania State University), Wayne Osgood (Pennsylvania State University), Elizabeth Ananat ( Duke University)

Martin and colleagues will look at an emerging natural experiment—the extraction of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale geological formation, and the way this industry has changed family incomes in the surrounding regions—to determine how increased family income affects child well-being from infancy through late adolescence.

Inequality at Home: The Evolution of Class-based Gaps in Young Children’s Home Environments and Pre-school Skills from 1986 to 2012
Ariel Kalil (University of Chicago), Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest (New York University), Rebecca Ryan (Georgetown University), Sean Reardon (Stanford University), Greg Duncan (University of California, Irvine)

Kalil and colleagues will examine the class-based gaps in cognitive and non-cognitive skills that arise early in life, analyzing whether economically advantaged parents are able to provide higher levels of cognitive stimulation, and tracking whether the relationship between children’s home environments and preschool-age skills change over time for economically advantaged and disadvantaged children.

Jointly funded with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Understanding the Role of Schools, State Policies, and Economic Conditions in Explaining Recent Trends in Education Mobility
Jason Fletcher (University of Wisconsin)

Fletcher will analyze three school-based longitudinal data sets from the past three decades to provide an assessment of educational mobility, focusing on the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status and how these effects vary over time and across states.

The Effects of Pre-K Access and Quality on Social Inequality
Timothy J. Bartik (W.E. Upjohn Institute), Brad J. Hershbein (W.E. Upjohn Institute)

Bartik and Hershbein will launch a national-level study to explore the extent to which students’ educational success later in life depends on the availability and quality of public pre-K programs. They will also look at the ways in which the effects of pre-K vary by income group and race.

Social Background, Educational Attainment, and the Power of Performance: How Much Does the Test Score Gap Matter?
Michelle Jackson (Stanford University)

Jackson will explore how socioeconomic disparities in educational attainment manifest at the college level, looking at the extent to which educational outcomes, defined as attending and completing college, are primarily explained by test score gaps, and whether this might be changing over time.

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:

Does Good Management Promote Better Work-Life Balance?
Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), John van Reenen (London School of Economics), Raffaella Sadun (Harvard Business School)

Bloom and colleagues will conduct an innovative survey that systematically collects international data on management practices and work-life balance practices (such as schedule flexibility and family-care leave) in order to determine whether or not these practices are important for the management of successful firms.

Labor Market Networks and Recovery from the Great Recession
David Neumark (Michigan State University), Judith Hellerstein (University of Maryland), Mark Kutzbach (U.S. Bureau of the Census)

Neumark, Hellerstein, and Kutzbach will examine the importance of neighborhood-based labor market networks in helping unemployed workers find jobs in the wake of the Great Recession.

Upskilling During the Great Recession: Do Employers Demand Greater Skill When Workers Are Plentiful?
Daniel Shoag (Harvard University), Alicia Sasser Modestino (Northeastern University)

Shoag and Modestino will use data from online job vacancy postings from before, during, and after the Great Recession in order to explore the mechanisms underlying the observed increase in the number of high-skilled workers employed in middle-skilled occupations during the downturn.

Study on the Effects of Long-Term Unemployment in the Great Recession
Andreas Mueller (Columbia University), Till von Watcher (University of California at Los Angeles), Henry Farber (Princeton University), Edward Freeland (Princeton University)

Mueller and colleagues will examine the effects of long-term unemployment, distinguishing among workers who lose jobs (and become reemployed) at different points in time. They will look in particular at whether workers who lost jobs during the Recession cycled between temporary jobs and unemployment, or permanently dropped out of the labor force.