RSF grantees Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt have released a primer on the private equity sector and its impact on the American economy. The report, published by the Center for Economic Policy Research, examines private equity's effects on jobs, management decision-making, and the sustainability of productive enterprises in the U.S. Here is an excerpt from the report's introduction:

Our examination of widely cited studies of private equity helps to illuminate some of the major controversies over private equity. On employment impacts, for example, we examine the most rigorous empirical evidence, the widely cited National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study of the effects of private equity on employment. It finds a “clear pattern of slower growth at [private equity] targets post buyout” – a differential that cumulates to 3.2 percent of employment in the first two years post-buyout and 6.4 percent over five years (Davis et al. 2011:17). This slower growth, the researchers note, “reflects a greater pace of job destruction” at firms taken over by private equity post-buyout than at comparable establishments (2011:18). They nevertheless conclude that employment growth at private-equity-owned firms is only slightly slower than at other similar companies. They reach this conclusion by calculating not only the net effect of employees hired and fired by the private equity owned company, but also by adding in any employees in businesses that the company acquired while it was owned by PE. The jobs of these acquired employees, however, are not new jobs in the economy and clearly were not created by private equity.

Chicago Policy Review conducted an interview with Stanford researchers Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, who published a U.S. 2010 project report last year on increasing residential income segregation in America. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

In your report, you discuss the effects of income segregation on children. Can you discuss the long-term consequences you anticipate for children raised in neighborhoods with high income segregation?

The concern we have is that within metropolitan areas, as income is increasingly unequally distributed among neighborhoods and communities so too is the quality of public resources, such as schools. Schools are a focal point because education is important for upward mobility, and schools are also where children spend a great deal of their time. Thus, equality of educational opportunity is important both for equality of outcomes as well as for children’s quality of life. In addition to the actual access to resources, such as schools, green space, and clean air, we are also concerned that the increasing separation of affluent and poor families leads to less interaction between people of different social classes. This could lead to more polarization of political beliefs, as well as less support among the affluent for equality-generating social policies.

The March 2012 issue of Social Science Quarterly features two immigration research articles from RSF grantees. The first article was written by Krista Perreira, Stephanie Potochnick, and Andrew Fuligni:

Title: Fitting In: The Roles of Social Acceptance and Discrimination in Shaping the Daily Psychological Well-Being of Latino Youth

Abstract: We examine how acculturation experiences such as discrimination and social acceptance influence the daily psychological well-being of Latino youth living in newly emerging and historical receiving immigrant communities. We use data on 557 Latino youth enrolled in high school in Los Angeles or in rural or urban North Carolina. Compared to Latino youth in Los Angeles, Latino youth in urban and rural North Carolina experienced higher levels of daily happiness, but also experienced higher levels of daily depressive and anxiety symptoms. Differences in nativity status partially explained location differences in youths’ daily psychological well-being. Discrimination and daily negative ethnic treatment worsened, whereas social acceptance combined with daily positive ethnic treatment and ethnic and family identification improved, daily psychological well-being. Our analysis contributes to understanding the acculturation experiences of immigrant youth and the roles of social context in shaping adolescent mental health.

Krista Perreira, one of the article's authors, also wrote a summary of her project for RSF's website. The second article published in the journal was written by Melissa Marschall, Paru Shah, and Katherine Donato: