The Russell Sage Foundation prioritizes social science research into today’s most pressing social and economic concerns. This page features periodic overviews of research grants made on discrete topics–such the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social, political, and economic conditions in the U.S.–drawn from across RSF’s four main research programs and its special initiatives. Together, they demonstrate RSF’s commitment to funding research “for the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.”
New proposals are no longer being accepted in the following grant programs and initiatives. Note that the Cultural Contact and Immigration programs have been replaced by Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration and the Behavioral Economics and Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context programs have been replaced by Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context.
Incorporating biological theories, concepts, and measures into social science research can further our understanding of how environmental factors influence a range of health and socioeconomic behaviors and outcomes over the life course.
The foundation’s Behavioral Economics program supports research that uses insights and methods from psychology, economics, sociology, political science and other social sciences to examine and improve social and living conditions in the United States. Launched jointly with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1986, the program was instrumental in the development of this new interdisciplinary field. The foundation provides funding for research projects, as well as a two-week summer institute and a small grants program for doctoral students and recent graduates.
A 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report confirms that, for education, income, residential integration, English language fluency, and living above the poverty line, the children of immigrants do better than their parents and reach parity with other U.S.-born citizens, often within a generation.
The Russell Sage Foundation, in collaboration with the Hewlett, Spencer, and William T. Grant Foundations, seeks to support innovative research on the aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious college and university admissions policies.
The Russell Sage Foundation’s Social, Political, and Economic Inequality program focuses on the causes and consequences of social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S. The program examines the factors that contribute to social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S., and the extent to which those inequalities affect social, political, psychological, and economic outcomes such as educational and labor market access and opportunities, social and economic mobility within and across generations, and civic participation and representation.
The Foundation’s program on Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration, replaces two previous programs: Immigration and Cultural Contact. Insights gained from these two long-standing programs inform the genesis of the new program on Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration. The program encourages multi-disciplinary perspectives on questions stemming from the significant changes in the racial, ethnic, and immigrant-origin composition of the U.S. population.
The Future of Work program examines the causes and consequences of the deteriorating quality of low-wage jobs in the United States. Projects sponsored by the program have examined a wide range of causal factors, from foreign outsourcing and immigration to the decline of unions and technological change, that may have depressed wages of low-education workers. Current research under this program includes a new investigation to re-assess how minimum wage increases affect employment and the broader labor market; a new study of the extent of offshoring of production by U.S.
The Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) core program on Behavioral Science and Decision Making in Context (launched in 2022) merges its long-standing program on Behavioral Economics and its special initiative on Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context.