This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.

A recent article in the New York Times highlighted a new study by Visiting Scholar Sean Reardon (Stanford) on the persistence of a “racial neighborhood income gap” in many metropolitan areas in the U.S. As Reardon and his colleagues found, while middle-class whites and Asian Americans in tend to live in neighborhoods where the median income matches or exceeds their own, black middle-class families tend to live in distinctly lower-income places. Because children who grow up in more affluent neighborhoods have been shown to fare better as adults than their counterparts in lower income neighborhoods, this study holds sobering implications for black children in the U.S., even those who belong to middle-class families.

Among the disadvantages associated with residing in a lower income area is lack of access to high quality public education. During his time in residence at the Foundation, Reardon has researched educational achievement gaps in the U.S., looking in particular at racial and socioeconomic inequalities. In a new interview with the Foundation, he discussed the widening of the economic achievement gap and the troubling persistence of racial disparities by neighborhood.

Q. Your current research examines the factors behind racial and economic achievement gaps in US public education. While the racial achievement gap appears to be on the decline, the economic achievement gap has increased over the last few decades. What accounts for this divergence?

Several RSF Visiting Scholars recently appeared in the news to discuss the evolution of racial identity in the U.S. In a June op-ed for the New York Times, Visiting Scholar Richard Alba (CUNY Graduate Center) discussed a new report from the Pew Research Center that highlighted the rapid increase of the number of Americans who identify as multiracial. As racial and ethnic diversity has continued to grow due to increased immigration and interracial unions, many have assumed that the U.S. is becoming a “post-racial” society. Yet, Alba cautioned, “We will seem like a majority-white society for much longer than is believed.”

As he explained, while the number of multiracial Americans has indeed grown over the last several decades, race continues to socially constrain many groups. Citing The Diversity Paradox by Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean, Alba noted that while mixed-race individuals of white-Latino or white-Asian backgrounds generally enjoyed freedom in choosing their identities, this was not the case for multiracial individuals with a black parent. As Alba noted, “They experienced racial barriers, showing that visible African ancestry is still the great exception when it comes to the mainstream.”

Visiting Scholar Aliya Saperstein (Stanford) echoed some of these sentiments in an interview with the Washington Post on the new Pew study, for which she was consulted. Though the multiracial population in the U.S. is projected to triple by 2060, Saperstein stated of the latest Pew report, “I don’t think that I would describe the report as saying that we’ve reached a tipping point in seeing ourselves as a nation of multiracial people.”

The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Hirokazu Yoshikawa to its board of trustees. Yoshikawa is currently the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and a University Professor at NYU. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation during the academic year of 2008-2009, and is the author of the RSF book Immigrants Raising Citizens (2011) and co-editor of the RSF book Making It Work: Low-Wage Employment, Family Life, and Child Development (2006).

As a community and developmental psychologist, Yoshikawa studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He has also conducted research on culture, sexuality and youth and young adult development in the contexts of HIV risk and prevention and gay/straight alliances.

Yoshikawa obtained his PhD in Psychology from NYU in 1998. He has previously served as the Academic Dean and the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is currently a member of Leadership Council and Co-Chair of the early childhood development and education workgroup of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He also serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society, the National Academy of Sciences Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally, and the boards of the Foundation for Child Development, the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report, and the Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Development Program. He is also a member of the National Board for Education Sciences and the National Academy of Education.

RSF author and former Visiting Scholar Jennifer Lee (UC Irvine) has been selected as chair-elect of the American Sociological Association Section on International Migration. One of 52 special interest groups within the association, the International Migration section aims to stimulate, promote, and reward the development of original theory and research on international migration. During her term, Lee aims to make scholarly research in the field of international migration more accessible to the public audience by connecting it to pressing policy debates.

Lee was a Visiting Scholar at the Foundation during the academic year of 2011-2012. She is co-author with Frank Bean of the RSF book The Diversity Paradox (2010), and co-author with Min Zhou of the newly released RSF book The Asian American Achievement Paradox (2015). In The Asian American Achievement Paradox, Lee and Zhou offer a compelling account of the academic achievement of the children of Asian immigrants—which pundits have long attributed to unique cultural values. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the adult children of Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees and survey data, Lee and Zhou bridge sociology and social psychology to correct this myth and explain how immigration laws, institutions, and culture interact to foster high achievement among certain Asian American groups.

Lee's one-year term as chair of the ASA Section on International Migration begins in August 2015.