The Russell Sage Foundation recently approved 18 research grants in its programs on Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; and Social, Political, and Economic Inequality and in the special initiative on Immigration and Immigrant Integration. Three grants were co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and one grant was co-funded with The Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
The research projects include studies on how how joblessness, income insecurity, and social isolation are associated with opioid-related diseases of despair; why so many public sector workers continue to pay dues after the Supreme Court’s Janus decision; the causes and consequences of the expulsion and exclusion of minority populations in the U.S.; how wage exploitation, religious profiling, and racism affect South Asian immigrants in New York; the academic and early-career outcomes of refugee and asylee students in Texas; how solidarity between people of color is activated and how it may affect subsequent voting and other political behaviors; the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Asian hate crimes on Chinese restaurant workers in New York; and new ways to reduce prejudice and increase support for policies that address racial inequality; and how a World War II-era program providing free postgraduate education and explicitly prohibiting discrimination reduced racial and gender gaps in career outcomes.
Following is a list of the recent research grants. Please click on each one to read a brief description of the research grant.
Future of Work
Victor Chen (Virginia Commonwealth University) will conduct a qualitative study of the pathways through which joblessness, income insecurity, and social isolation are associated with opioid-related diseases of despair in urban and rural contexts.
Evan Starr (University of Maryland, College Park), Emily Nix (University of Southern California) and Jason Sockin (IZA Institute of Labor Economics) will estimate the value workers place on their employers providing access to out-of-state abortion-related healthcare and differences in such valuations among different types of workers in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision rescinding the federal right to abortion.
Jake Rosenfeld (Washington University, St. Louis), Patrick Denice (University of Western Ontario), and Jennifer Laird (Lehman College, CUNY) will examine why public sector union membership remained relatively stable for five years following the Janus Supreme Court ruling, which restricted collective bargaining rights in the public sector. Co-funded with The Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Immigration and Immigrant Integration
Shahla Hussain (St. John’s University) will conduct a qualitative study of low-wage, first-generation South Asians residing in Queens, NY, to explore how wage exploitation, religious profiling, and racism have shaped their integration into society. Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Toni Templeton and Fiza Mairaj (University of Houston) will examine the academic and early-career outcomes, and factors related to those outcomes, of refugee and asylee students in Texas. Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Andrea Velasquez (University of Colorado, Denver) and Duncan Thomas (Duke University) will examine the selectivity of Mexican immigrants and their socioeconomic integration, comparing those staying in the U.S. and those returning to Mexico. Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
Samuel Bazzi (University of California at San Diego), Eric Chyn (University of Texas at Austin), Andreas Ferraro (University of Pittsburgh), Martin Fiszbein (Boston University), Thomas Pearson (Syracuse University), and Patrick Testa (Tulane University) will use linked historical census and newspaper data, and large language models to analyze the causes and consequences of the expulsion and exclusion of minority populations across the U.S.
Jennifer Candipan (Brown University) and Chantal Hailey (University of Texas, Austin) will investigate the relationship between changing neighborhood and school demographics and racial differences in discipline within schools.
Seth Goldman, Linda Tropp and Tatishe Nteta (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and Efrén Pérez and Yuen Huo (University of California, Los Angeles) will examine the extent to which exposure to narratives of rising diversity influences racialized perceptions, attitudes, and identities of Asian, Black, Latino, multiracial, and White Americans.
Zai Liang and Tse-Chuan Yang (University at Albany, SUNY) will analyze cell phone and survey data to examine the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns and anti-Asian hate incidents on the foot traffic and restaurants in Chinatown in New York City.
Efrén Pérez (University of California, Los Angeles) will study how solidarity between people of color is activated and how it may affect subsequent voting and other political behaviors.
Alauna Safarpour (Gettysburg College) will examine the mechanisms and durability of interactive, online, perspective-taking interventions to encourage empathy, reduce anti-Black racism, and increase support for policies focused on redressing racial inequality.
Tracie Stewart, Anisah Bagasra, Tim Martin, Ordene Edwards, and Jennifer Willard (Kennesaw State University) will examine the effects of a multi-session version of an evidence-based, intensive anti-bias training technique on implicit and explicit attitudes toward Black Americans and Arab Muslim Americans, relative to White Americans.
Christian Zlolniski and Luis Plascencia (University of Texas at Arlington) will conduct a qualitative methods study of H-2B visa Mexican workers in the Texas landscaping industry.
Social, Political, and Economic Inequality
Alessandro Del Ponte and Enrijeta Shino (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), and Sean Freeder (University of North Florida) will examine the factors that are associated with attitudes toward student loan forgiveness.
Michela Giorcelli (University of California, Los Angeles) will examine the extent to which a World War II-era program providing free postgraduate education and explicitly prohibiting discrimination reduced racial and gender gaps in career outcomes.
Taeho Kim and Clémentine Van Effenterre (University of Toronto) will conduct an audit experiment to examine how recruiters respond to workers’ willingness to engage in salary negotiations, and how this varies by gender of the candidate and the existence of pay transparency in the job advertisement.
Emily Rauscher (Brown University) will examine how school-supporting non-profit funds are distributed by schools that differ in their students’ family income and race/ethnicity and how such funds relate to district spending and student extra/curricular options and participation.