Russell Sage Foundation president Sheldon Danziger will deliver remarks at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University on May 12, 2015. He will join Bradford Wilcox (University of Virginia) and moderator Lisa Hamilton (Annie E. Casey Foundation) on a panel titled “Poverty Research and Realities: Economic and Family Factors.” With Martha J. Bailey, Danziger is co-editor of the 2013 RSF book Legacies of the War on Poverty, which evaluates the successes of the anti-poverty programs established during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, many of which still form the basis of the social safety net in the U.S. today.

Also scheduled to appear at the summit is President Barack Obama, who will discuss the topic of poverty and opportunity. Other speakers include Harvard public policy professor Robert Putnam, American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, and journalist E.J. Dionne. Conference participants will address key questions related to the moral, human and economic costs of poverty in the United States.

The journal Social Science Research recently published a new paper co-authored by RSF grantee Chandra Muller (University of Texas, Austin) and Sarah Blanchard. In her 2006 RSF project, Muller explored how schools facilitated the integration of immigrant youth into civic society through exposure to civics related curricula. She also examined how the retention or loss of a native language affected young immigrants’ integration into civic society, and whether having peers who spoke the same native language affected their integration.

In her most recent paper, Muller draws from this research to look specifically at how teachers' perceptions of their immigrant, language-minority students affects those students' academic achievement. The abstract of the paper states:

High school teachers evaluate and offer guidance to students as they approach the transition to college based in part on their perceptions of the student's hard work and potential to succeed in college. Their perceptions may be especially crucial for immigrant and language-minority students navigating the U.S. educational system. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we consider how the intersection of nativity and language-minority status may (1) inform teachers' perceptions of students' effort and college potential, and (2) shape the link between teachers' perceptions and students' academic progress towards college (grades and likelihood of advancing to more demanding math courses). We find that teachers perceive immigrant language-minority students as hard workers, and that their grades reflect that perception. However, these same students are less likely than others to advance in math between the sophomore and junior years, a critical point for preparing for college. Language-minority students born in the U.S. are more likely to be negatively perceived. Yet, when their teachers see them as hard workers, they advance in math at the same rates as nonimmigrant native English speaking peers. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering both language-minority and immigrant status as social dimensions of students' background that moderate the way that high school teachers' perceptions shape students' preparation for college.

The death of 25-year-old Baltimore resident Freddie Gray in police custody has drawn renewed scrutiny to the ongoing problem of the excessive use of force by police in African American communities across the U.S. Gray’s death from spinal damage—likely caused in the back of the police van in which he was detained—led to days of protests in Baltimore, with repeated clashes between demonstrators and the police. Recently, Baltimore lead prosecutor Marilyn J. Mosby announced that the city would be pursuing homicide charges against the officers who had unlawfully arrested Gray.

Tensions between community members and the police have simmered for decades in West Baltimore, where Gray was stopped. An area with high rates of poverty, low life expectancies, and limited educational opportunities, West Baltimore was the site of a 25-year study on the persistence of racial and socioeconomic inequality conducted by Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson. Their findings, presented in the RSF book The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood (2014), offer a detailed examination of the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations of city residents. In their study, the authors traced the outcomes of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children, and monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults.

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.

Paul Osterman (MIT) is co-author of the 2011 RSF book Good Jobs America and a current Visiting Scholar. During his time in residence, Osterman is examining strategies for improving job quality in the low-wage labor market, specifically through initiatives that encourage employers to improve their human resource policies. In order to aid the development of policies that lead to better wages and benefits in the private sector, he will investigate the conditions that incentivize firms to improve their employment practices, focusing on the health care and manufacturing industries.

In a new interview with the Foundation, Osterman focused on low-wage home care aides, discussing the existing barriers to increasing their pay, and offering solutions for improving job quality for this group in the future.

Q. Your current research examines the plight of low-wage home care aides. What makes this group of workers especially vulnerable in ways that other professions in the medical industry are not?

RSF trustee Larry M. Bartels (Vanderbilt University) and former RSF Visiting Scholar Philip E. Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania) were recently named 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellows. They will join an inaugural class of 30 other scholars, journalists, and authors as part of the Carnegie Corporation’s annual fellowship program that provides support for researchers in the social sciences and humanities.

Larry Bartels is currently May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. His scholarly work focuses on American democracy, including public opinion, electoral politics, public policy, and representation. His most recent book, Unequal Democracy (2008), was cited by Barack Obama on the campaign trail and appeared on the New York Times’ list of economics books of the year. Bartels is also a contributor to the RSF book Inequality and American Democracy (2007) and continues to serve on the RSF board of trustees.

Philip Tetlock is currently Leonore Annenberg University Professor of Psychology and Management at the University of Pennsylvania. During his time in residence at the Russell Sage Foundation (2005-2006), Tetlock studied the political implications of the ways in which people make decisions and systematically err in judgment. His work explored the decision-making of political experts, the ways in which a society’s moral boundaries limit new thinking, and how a person’s willingness to consider historical counterfactuals relates to their understanding of the past and the future.