The Russell Sage Foundation recently approved 22 research grants in its program on Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context; Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality and in the special initiative on Immigration and Immigrant Integration. Two grants were co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The research projects include studies analyzing the nature of online interactions about race on the neighborhood-based social networking platform Nextdoor; the attributes that make federal employee unions strong and how union strength affects workplace outcomes such as employee benefits; the extent to which exposure to immigrant students affects short and long-run educational and labor market outcomes of Texas-born students; the inequalities and harms of solitary confinement in a Pennsylvania state prison; how George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests influenced corporate behavior; the impacts of both Federal Housing Administration and Veteran’s Administration activity on racial inequality in neighborhood attainment, wealth building, and housing opportunity; the circumstances that led low-socioeconomic status mothers to leave the labor force during the pandemic; and the long-run impacts of early childhood exposure to PFAS, or forever chemicals, on educational attainment and earnings.
Following is a list of the recent research grants. Please click on each one for a brief description of the research project.
Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context
Jennifer Eberhardt (Stanford University) and Dan Jurafsky (Stanford University) will examine the nature of online interactions about race on the neighborhood-based social networking platform Nextdoor.
Sara Heller (University of Michigan) and Ashley Craig (University of Michigan) will examine whether violence-reduction interventions change criminal behavior of others in participants’ social networks.
Paolina Medina-Palma (Texas A&M University), Stephanie Heger (University of Bologna), Kai Barron (WZB-Berlin), Teodora Boneva (University of Bonn), and Silvia Saccardo (Carnegie Mellon University) will organize the 2023 Early Career Behavioral Economics conference.
Negin Toosi (California State University, East Bay) will identify interventions that might make people more likely to acknowledge the existence of systemic racial inequality and support teaching about it.
Future of Work
Thomas DiPrete (Columbia University) will examine the extent to which firm-level earnings differences contribute to the gender wage gap.
Philip Kircher (Cornell University) and Michele Belot (Cornell University) will evaluate an intervention that aims to help job seekers better identify well-fitting job opportunities.
Rachel Potter (University of Virginia) and Alexander Bolton (Emory University) will investigate what attributes make federal employee unions strong and how union strength affects workplace outcomes such as employee benefits.
Raffaella Sadun (Harvard Business School) and Jorge Tamayo (Harvard Business School) will investigate the challenges faced by organizations implementing upskilling and reskilling initiatives.
Immigration and Immigrant Integration
Briana Ballis (University of California, Merced) and Derek Rury (University of Chicago) will examine the extent to which exposure to immigrant students affects short and long-run educational and labor market outcomes of Texas-born students. This grant is funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation.
Angie Ngọc Trần (University Corporation at Monterey Bay) and Lorenzo Covarrubias (University Corporation at Monterey Bay) will examine the strategies that transnational Mexican agricultural workers use to increase earnings and improve the quality of life for their families and communities in Mexico. This grant is funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
Bruce Western (Columbia University) and Jessica Simes (Boston University) will examine the inequalities and harms of solitary confinement in a Pennsylvania state prison.
Social, Political, and Economic Inequality
Atinuke Adediran (Fordham University) will examine how George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests influenced corporate behavior.
Lisa Abraham (RAND Corporation), Neil Thakral (Brown University), and Linh Tô (Boston University) will examine the extent to which increased engagement with college career center resources improves the labor market outcomes of less-advantaged college students.
Noli Brazil (University of California, Davis) will examine whether the effects of neighborhood exposure to violent crime and extreme are mitigated by the broader conditions of the metropolitan area.
Jacob Faber (New York University) and Wenfei Xu (Cornell University) will examine the impacts of both Federal Housing Administration and Veteran’s Administration activity on racial inequality in neighborhood attainment, wealth building, and housing opportunity.
Priya Fielding-Singh (University of Utah) and Elizabeth Talbert (Drake University) will investigate the circumstances that led low-socioeconomic status mothers to leave the labor force during the pandemic.
Boris Heersink (Fordham University) and Matthew J. Lacombe (Case Western Reserve University) will investigate when and how unexpected political alliances form and when and why they develop into durable rather than short-term alliances.
Irene Jacqz (Iowa State University) and John Voorheis (U.S. Census Bureau) will investigate the long-run impacts of early childhood exposure to PFAS, or forever chemicals, on educational attainment and earnings.
Amanda Kowalski (University of Michigan) will evaluate the tradeoff between equality in access and equity in outcomes of a COVID-19 vaccine program run by Michigan Medicine, a large healthcare system with locations throughout Michigan and northwest Ohio.
Elizabeth Linos (Harvard University) will examine the role of stigma in the take-up of public safety-net benefits.\
Jose Lopez (University of Memphis) will examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 on the incidence of jury trials in cases of employment discrimination and the probability of the plaintiff winning in such trials.
James Sullivan (University of Notre Dame), Mary Kate Batistich (University of Notre Dame), and Adrienne Sabety (Stanford University) will examine the impact of cash transfers to individuals for the year after they exit a Rapid Re-Housing program and the effects on homelessness, housing stability, and well-being.