Russel Sage Foundation

The program on Behavioral Economics 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. Read More

The special initiative supports innovative social science research on the causes and consequences of the increased incidence of alternative work arrangements in the United States. We define alternative work arrangements as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers. Read More

The special initiative on Decision Making and Human Behavior in Context supports innovative research on decision making across the social sciences that examines causes, consequences, processes, or context from a behavioral or alternative perspective. Read More

The special initiative supports innovative social science research on the social, economic and political effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We are especially interested in funding analyses that address important questions about the effects of the reform on outcomes such as financial security and family economic well-being, labor supply and demand, participation in other public programs, family and children’s outcomes, and differential effects by age, race, ethnicity, nativity, or disability status. Read More

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The Biology and Social Science (BioSS) workin group examines how the incorporation of biological concepts, processes and measures in social science research might improve our understanding of a range of social and economic outcomes. Read More

The Computational Social Science Working Group examines how “big data” can expand our understanding of social issues and improve research methods in the social sciences. Read More

In March 2019, the Foundation’s trustees decided that RSF would no longer accept unsolicited research proposals under this special initiative. However, it remains interested in supporting research that can advance our understanding of the role of environmental influences on life outcomes when biological concepts, processes and measures are incorporated in social science research. Examples of the kinds of biologically-oriented research questions RSF might support are now included in the RFPs for our programs in Social, Political and Economic Inequality and Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. Read More

This special initiative, in collaboration with the JPB Foundation, supports innovative social science research that explores how biological mechanisms interact with the environment to influence individuals’ social and economic outcomes. We seek projects that take advantage of new theories, concepts, and indicators from neuroscience, endocrinology, immunology and physiology, genetics and epigenetics to further our understanding of socioeconomic attainment and other social science issues that are relevant to RSF’s core program areas. We are primarily interested in research that explores and improves our understanding of social and economic predictors and outcomes. Read More

There are many social scientific questions that only the census can answer, and many more that it answers with more authority than any other source of data. As the largest social survey of the United States, the census is capable of tracking small groups and finely distinguished slices of the population. It is, for example, our only source of information about smaller racial and ethnic minorities, specific occupations, and particular income categories. Read More

The special initiative on Computational Social Science supports innovative social science research that brings new data (e.g. public and private administrative databases, and new sources of information from online transactions, social-media interactions, and internet searches) and methods (e.g. machine learning, text analysis, social media, online surveys and experiments) to bear on questions of interest in its core programs. The initiative has added a new topic of interest: algorithmic bias/fairness. Limited consideration will be given to research that focuses primarily on methodologies, such as causal inference and innovations in data collection. Read More

The Cultural Contact and Immigration Working Group examines immigrant life outside of customary gateway cities such as New York, Miami, or Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the cultural frictions resulting from the rapid growth of the foreign-born population in the United States at a time of high economic uncertainty and political polarization. Read More

The Foundation’s Cultural Contact program is no longer accepting new grant proposals and has been replaced by the Foundation’s new Research on Ethnicity and Immigration program. Founded in 1992, the program sought to understand and improve relations between racial and ethnic groups. Read More

RSF offers small grants to doctoral students at the dissertation stage and recent Ph.D. recipients to support innovative, high-quality research and to encourage young investigators to enter these developing interdisciplinary fields. Small grants are currently offered under the Foundation’s program in Behavioral Economics. Read More

Since 1991, the Foundation’s Immigration program has looked beyond the immediate costs and benefits of immigration to the United States to examine how well immigrants and their children are adapting socially, politically, and economically. Read More

The Racial Bias in Policing Working Group examines the impact of racial, ethnic, and gender-based attitudes on law enforcement. The group is working with metropolitan police departments across the U.S. to develop policies to reduce racial bias in law enforcement. Read More

In 1992, Russell Sage Foundation was invited by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help develop an initiative aimed at strengthening educational research to improve literacy levels in the United States. The program focused on applying findings from basic cognitive science to educational practice that would foster the ability of students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to read, write, and reason effectively. Read More

The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, RSF's largest single effort in the 1990s, was aimed at finding out why high rates of joblessness have persisted among minorities living in America's central cities. Despite a robust U. S. economy, millions of low-skill, inner-city workers remain unemployed or stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs. One explanation is that the economic restructuring of recent decades has increased the educational and skill requirements for most jobs and that most inner-city workers do not have the training and experience to qualify for these jobs. Read More

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 altered the political, social, and economic landscape of the United States and the world. On that day, thousands of lives were lost, the structure of the U.S. economy was shaken, and the bonds of community in a multi-cultural world were put to the test. Read More

Too many of America’s most disadvantaged children grow up without the skills needed to thrive in the twenty-first century. Whether in educational attainment between income groups or racial/ethnic groups or across geographic locations—inequality persists. Low levels of performance among the most disadvantaged create long-term problems, particularly in an economy in which higher skill levels are more and more valued and the wages available to less-skilled workers are deteriorating. Read More

In 1994 the Foundation approved the formation of a working group of political scientists interested in probing what they perceived as growing citizen disenchantment with the nation's political system. Read More

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation completed a major initiative to assess the effects of the Great Recession on the economic, political, and social life of the country. Officially over in 2009, the Great Recession is now generally acknowledged to be the most devastating global economic crisis since the Great Depression. Prolonged economic stagnation is likely to transform American institutions and severely erode the life chances of many Americans. Read More

Most of the Foundation’s programs are aimed at deepening our understanding of social problems and social trends that immediately impact the quality of national life. On occasion, however, RSF invests in social research for sheerly scientific reasons – when we believe that the long-term development of social science will yield eventual benefits in improved understanding of the causal forces underlie the flux of social events. Behavioral economics has been one such undertaking; our research initiative on the social role of trust is another.   Read More

For sixty years, the Russell Sage Foundation has produced authoritative research on trends and changes in U.S. society using information from the decennial census. U.S. 2010: America After the First Decade of the New Century continued this tradition by reporting on key social and economic trends during the previous decade. Between 2000 and 2010, the United States experienced dramatic political, social, and economic changes and events. Read More

With the support of the Foundation, political scientists Theda Skocpol (Harvard University) and Lawrence Jacobs (University of Minnesota) formed a working group to track the course and fate of Obama's efforts to reorient domestic policy during 2009 and 2010. Members traced developments in eight specific policy areas: health reform, financial regulation, energy and climate change, tax policy, higher education funding, primary and secondary school reform, immigration policy, and labor law reform. Read More

Both scholars and citizens suspect economic elites have great influence on politics. Yet the scholarly research on money in politics has generally concluded that wealthy individuals and interest groups cannot simply ‘buy votes’ in institutions like Congress. This has led some to argue that the influence of money upon American political life is either "not much" or under estimated. The research findings in this tradition have mostly looked at the effects of campaign contributions upon Congressional roll call voting. Read More

In November 2019, the Foundation’s trustees decided that RSF would no longer accept unsolicited research proposals under the Computational Social Science special initiative. However, RSF remains interested in supporting research that brings these new data and methods to bear on questions of interest in its core programs. Examples of the kinds of CSS-related research questions RSF might support are now included in the RFPs for our programs in Future of Work, Race, Ethnicity and Immigration and Social, Political and Economic Inequality. Read More

We seek research projects that deepen our understanding of educational opportunity and success in the United States by using data on academic achievement from the Stanford Education Data Archive constructed by Sean Reardon and colleagues (http://seda.stanford.edu). Read More