This booklet, printed but not published by RSF, provides a list of charity organizations in the United States and Canada along with a selected list of foreign societies and US consuls.

This is the 1917 edition of the transportation agreement regulating the granting of free transportation and charity rates.

This booklet, issued in several editions for the Committee on Transportation of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, provides rules for the granting of free transportation and charity rates.

This article from Scribner’s Magazine was reprinted with permission by the Russell Sage Foundation. It discusses the growth of charity organizations in the United States. A note from the foundation indicates that the original article was illustrated and contained a sketch of New York City social agencies and tributes to the founders of those organizations.

JACOB A. RISS (1849–1914) was a journalist and social reformer.

This article from Scribner’s Magazine was reprinted with permission by the Russell Sage Foundation.  It discusses the growth of charity organizations in the United States. A note from the foundation indicates that the original article was illustrated and contained a sketch of New York City social agencies and tributes to the founders of those organizations.

JACOB A. RISS (1849–1914) was a journalist and social reformer.

Faith in the American Dream—the idea that anyone who works hard can achieve success—has waned in the 21st century. Decreases in economic mobility, increases in the wealth gap, and other economic shifts have undoubtedly influenced this decline. Politics, however, are an overlooked contributor to confidence, or lack of confidence, in the American Dream. In Debating the American Dream, political scientist Elizabeth Suhay investigates how politics and political identity are intertwined with beliefs about the American Dream and the causes of inequality.

Drawing on public opinion surveys spanning more than four decades, Suhay finds that Americans’ belief in the American Dream is strongly related to their political party affiliation. Democratic Party leaders have increasingly questioned the fairness of the American economy, and, in effect, have called into question whether the American Dream is “real.” Republican Party leaders, by contrast, have consistently defended the fairness of the economy and the American
Dream. While it is true that Americans have become more skeptical of the American Dream overall, Suhay finds this skepticism is concentrated among Democratic members of the public. Despite the increasingly working-class make-up of the Republican coalition, most Republican members of the public continue to believe the American Dream is reality.

Suhay finds that both Democrats and Republicans tend to adhere to their party’s economic narratives when identifying the causes of inequality between rich and poor, White and Black and Latino Americans, and men and women. Democrats and liberals often attribute inequality between these groups to societal causes, such as lack of access to education and jobs or discrimination. Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, are more likely to blame individuals and
lower-income groups for their difficulties. However, Americans’ beliefs are less polarized when they consider socioeconomic inequalities rarely debated by politicians. For example, when surveys ask Republicans and Democrats about the roots of rural-urban and White-Asian inequality, there is no clear unequal opportunity–individual responsibility partisan divide. Suhay argues that the availability of partisan “scripts” helps to explain differences in the public’s views on inequality between groups that have been politicized. These beliefs appear to bolster support for the two parties’ policy agendas among party supporters, driving a wedge between Democrats and Republicans in support for redistributive economic policy as well as the political candidates who support or oppose redistribution.

Debating the American Dream provides fascinating insights into politics’ role in Americans’ beliefs and attitudes concerning inequality.

Wellesley, Massachusetts, has long been considered the archetypal New England WASP community. However, as new groups moved in over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Wellesley has undergone slow but consistent change, transforming into a more demographically diverse and multilayered town. In Beyond White Picket Fences, sociologist Catherine Simpson Bueker explores how Wellesley has been shaped—and continues to be shaped—by its diversity.

Drawing on interviews, archival data, and participant observations, Bueker examines how Italian, Jewish, and Chinese newcomers
influenced and were influenced by the established Wellesley community. She examines the ways in which immigrant and ethnic groups assimilate, retain their cultural backgrounds, and respond to discrimination, sometimes simultaneously, and, in doing so, alter the mainstream. Some new residents responded to Wellesley by assimilating to it. They developed relationships with long-term resident neighbors, volunteered in their children’s schools, and ran for elected positions. In adapting themselves to their new community, however, they also influenced it by virtue of their distinct cultural backgrounds.

Other new residents worked to preserve their cultures by establishing ethnic-specific organizations, lobbying to have new holidays incorporated into the calendar, and hewing to their own ethnic culinary traditions. Their efforts also influenced the established community. When newcomers attempted to retain their culture by requesting ethnic-specific food items be stocked at the local grocery store, opening ethic restaurants, or renting space for a new organization, for example, they impacted the established community. New individuals and groups also responded to experiences of hostility and discrimination. Italian residents fought against attempts at school redistricting targeting them in the 1930s, Jewish residents pushed back against housing discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s, and Chinese residents responded to anti-Asian incidents in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. These groups had to engage with the larger community to rectify these injustices. Some of the changes in Wellesley have come about with little recognition or response; others have been met with resistance and anger. Whether the changes are subtle or obvious and whether new groups are embraced or resisted, the whole town is altered in an ongoing process as new groups continue to move to and settle in Wellesley.

Beyond White Picket Fences is a timely and compelling examination of the ways newcomers become part of and shape American communities.

Beyond unlivable wages and a lack of upward mobility, low-wage work in the United States is rife with danger and degrading treatment. Immigrants and people of color are overrepresented in these “bad jobs” and often feel as though they are unable to change their working conditions. In Legalized Inequalities, law scholar Kati L. Griffith, sociologist Shannon Gleeson, anthropologist Darlène Dubuisson, and political scientist Patricia Campos-Medina investigate the government’s role in perpetuating poor and dangerous work environments for low-wage immigrant workers of color.

Drawing on interviews with over three hundred low-wage Haitian and Central American workers and worker advocates, the authors reveal how U.S. policies produce and sustain job instability and insecurity. Contemporary U.S. labor and employment law, immigration policy, and enduring racial inequality work in tandem to keep workers’ wages low, lock them into substandard working conditions, and minimize opportunities for change. Regulations meant to protect workers are weak and underenforced, privileging employers over workers. At-will employment policies, which allow employers to terminate employees without cause, discourage workers from bargaining for better jobs or holding employers accountable for even the most egregious mistreatment. Federal immigration policy further disempowers workers by deputizing employers to act as immigration enforcement agents leading undocumented workers to believe they must endure maltreatment or risk deportation. Anti-immigrant sentiment—encouraged by U.S. policy—impacts workers across all status groups. Additionally, despite a proliferation of civil rights legislation, racial disparities remain in the workplace. Workers of color are often paid less, forced to complete more dangerous and demeaning tasks, and subjected to racial harassment.

While these workers face formidable barriers to fighting for their rights, they are not entirely powerless. Some low-wage workers filed formal complaints with government agencies. Others, on their own or collectively, confronted their employers to demand fair and dignified treatment. Some even quit in protest of their poor working conditions. The authors argue that reforming labor and employment law, immigration law, and civil rights law is necessary to reshape the low-wage workplace. They suggest increasing funding for workers’ rights enforcement agencies, removing the mandate for employers to verify a worker’s immigration status, and making it easier to prove that employment discrimination has occurred to help empower and protect low-wage immigrant workers of color.

Legalized Inequalities not only highlights the crushing consequences of U.S. policy on low-wage immigrant workers of color but showcases their resilience in the face of these obstacles.

"Conservatives in other countries have long supported universal child benefits as an important tool for tackling child poverty while encouraging work and family stability. American conservatives have been more skeptical, but, as Jane Waldfogel demonstrates with wide-ranging evidence, child benefits are one pro-family policy that deserves support across the political spectrum."
-JOSH McCABE, director of social policy, Niskanen Center

"In this well-researched and informative book, Jane Waldfogel examines the case for child benefits in the United States. Woven with evidence and history, and tackling head-on the trade-offs embedded in the policy debate, Child Benefits is exactly what we need for this moment."
-HILARY HOYNES, Chancellor's Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

"If you're interested in child poverty and in issues and challenges that government benefits and programs for children now face, do not miss Child Benefits. It is full of keen insights, thoughtful and deeply informative discussions, and wisdom about where we as a nation should go from here. And it's written in a clear, nontechnical, and highly readable manner that should appeal to a broad audience, which the book very much deserves."
-ROBERT GREENSTEIN, visiting fellow in economic studies, The Brookings Institution, and founder and president emeritus, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The United States has one of the highest child poverty rates among wealthy countries and stands out among its peers as the only country that does not offer a child benefit – regular payments from the government to most or all families with children, not conditioned on parental employment. During the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021, the CTC functioned as a child benefit, and the child poverty rate fell to the lowest level ever recorded in the United States. Despite this decrease, the CTC expansion was not renewed. Concerns about enacting a child benefit include the cost, the possibility of misuse of money by parents, and how it might affect parental employment and fertility. In Child Benefits, social policy scholar Jane Waldfogel details the history and origins of child benefits around the world and comprehensively assesses how child benefits affect family spending, fertility, employment, child poverty, and child wellbeing to address such concerns and to determine the benefits of enacting such a policy permanently.

Drawing on research from peer countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as the United States, Waldfogel shows that a child benefit would prevent poverty and hardship and protect children from deep poverty and income instability. The research is clear that families would spend the money from a child benefit on food, clothing, and other items for their children and that a child benefit would not have large negative impacts on parental employment or family decisions about fertility. It also shows that a child benefit would promote short- and longer-term child and family wellbeing. Child benefits have been shown to enhance opportunity and benefit society through healthier and better-educated young adults and stronger and more stable families. And rigorous benefit-cost analyses indicate that a child benefit, while costly, would more than pay for itself, yielding a large return on investment.

Waldfogel evaluates four current, major proposals for a child benefit and provides recommendations for a policy that would deliver the best outcomes for children and families and the best return on investment. She argues that such a policy would be more generous, not tied to parental employment or earnings, available to all parents but phased out for higher-income families, delivered in monthly payments through the tax system, and provided in addition to existing social programs.

Child Benefits provides fascinating insights on the history and impacts of child benefits and makes a clear and definitive argument for the establishment of a child benefit in the United States.