The Russell Sage Foundation recently approved the following Presidential Authority awards in four core program areas—Behavioral Economics; Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; and Social Inequality—as well as a new award made under the foundation’s special initiative on the Affordable Care Act and other federal health policies.

Behavioral Economics

Russell Golman and George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University) will organize a conference on belief-based utility.

Future of Work

Frank Levy (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will explore the extent to which Automatic Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing can substitute or complement the work of call center operators.

Matissa Hollister (McGill University) will conduct a cross-national study of job instability trends in Canada and the U.S.

Race, Ethnicity & Immigration

Mara C. Ostfeld (University of Michigan) will study the conditions that affect how people report their own skin color.

Social Inequality

Daniel Schneider (University of California, Berkeley) will explore the relationship between growing income inequality and class disparities in parental expenditures on children.

Christopher Wildeman and Maria D. Fitzpatrick (Cornell University) will investigate the effects of parental incarceration on children.

Social, Economic, and Political Effects of the Affordable Care Act

Kathy Swartz, Mary C. Waters and Theda Skocpol (Harvard University) will study the effects of the 2017 federal changes to the Affordable Care Act.