The November issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science examines the aftermath of the Great Recession and the ways in which federal and state policies affected the course of the crisis. The issue includes an introduction by Russell Sage Foundation president, Sheldon Danziger, and features contributions from a distinguished group of leading social scientists, including several papers by scholars who contributed research to the Foundation’s Great Recession Initiative.

As Danziger outlines in his introduction, the Great Recession—which the National Bureau of Economic Research officially dates as lasting from December 2007 through June 2009—marks the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s. In looking at the lingering effects on the housing market, unemployment rate, and an ever-widening wealth gap, research from the issue documents the significant social and economic costs of the recession—effects that are likely to persist for at least another decade.

The Russell Sage Foundation’s Great Recession Initiative provided support for many of the papers published in this issue of the Annals. Established in 2010, the Great Recession Initiative is a major research project which examines the effects of the Great Recession across a broad swath of America’s social and economic life. Moving beyond a simple description of trends, the Initiative analyzes some unanticipated implications of the downturn and uses a variety of methods and datasets to investigate many of the vexing and often unprecedented policy problems posed by the economic disruption, such as the slow recovery of the labor market and the rightward drift of political sentiment. In collaboration with the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, the Foundation also launched the Recession Trends website as part of the Initiative, a resource dedicated to monitoring the social and economic fallout of the recession.

 Contributors to the issue who have been involved with RSF’s Great Recession Initiative include:

• Larry M. Bartels on America’s political response to the recession, which encompassed both the election of Barack Obama and the rise of the Tea Party.
• Richard B. Freeman on the dire effects of the recession on the U.S. labor market: employment fell more sharply and for longer than at any time since World War II, and jobs have been slow to come back. According to some estimates it will take more than five years for the unemployment rate to fall to 4.7 percent, its level in November 2007, the month before the recession began.
• Fabian T. Pfeffer, Sheldon Danziger and Robert F. Schoeni on wealth disparities before and after the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2011, one-fourth of American families lost at least 75 percent of their wealth, and more than one-half of all families lost at least 25 percent of their wealth, with losses disproportionately concentrated among lower-income, less educated, and minority households.
• Alicia H. Munnell and Matthew S. Rutledge on the recession’s effect on the retirement security of older workers. As a result of the economic crash, many older workers were forced to delay retirement. Additionally, many late-career workers lost jobs and suffered long spells of unemployment, causing a record number of early Social Security retirement claims and disability applications.
• Robert A. Moffitt on the response of the social safety net during the Great Recession. In response to a spike in the poverty rate, federal safety net programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and the EITC expanded significantly to provide relief to the low-income population. While tax credits were more beneficial to those with higher earnings, food stamps and unemployment insurance served those at the bottom of the income distribution.
• Sarah A. Burgard, Jennifer A. Ailshire and Lucie Kalousova on the effects of the recession on Americans’ health. Though mortality rates generally decline during economic downturns—and did drop slightly during the Great Recession—individual-level studies show that job loss and sustained unemployment have negative health consequences, especially for the less advantaged.
• Ariel Kalil on the effects of the recession on child development. Evidence from studies of parental job loss and other sources of financial strain for families suggests that the Great Recession threatens the future opportunities of children, who may develop behavioral problems or fail to graduate high school due to their parents’ financial troubles.
• Andrea Louise Campbell and Michael W. Sances on the recession’s budgetary impacts at the state level, and the resulting policy responses. In response to soaring social program demands, Democratic legislatures were more likely than Republicans to raise income taxes and make larger midyear revenue increases. States with strong public sector unions were additionally less likely to cut spending, thus benefiting those most in need.

For more information on the November issue of the Annals, click here.

For more information about the Foundation’s Great Recession Initiative, click here.