Poverty Research & Policy

Material hardship like food or housing insecurity or inadequate access to medical care are routinely measured. But transportation insecurity has not been, despite its significance in the lives of people with low incomes, and the likelihood that it intersects with other forms of hardship.  For this episode, Dr. Alexandra Murphy joins us to discuss her recent co-authored paper, titled, “How Does Transportation Insecurity Compare and Relate to Other Indicators of Material Hardship in the U.S.?” She shares her work constructing and implementing the Transportation Insecurity Index, and explains how it is being used across the country.  Alex Murphy is a sociologist at the University of Michigan where she is an Assistant Research Scientist at Poverty Solutions in the Ford School of Public Policy and is the Associate Director of Social Science Research at Mcity.  

The 1960s and 1970s were a time of tremendous change politically and culturally in the United States. Federal legislation and policy enshrined voting rights and implemented measures to increase equality, but there were still many areas in which those changes fell short for people of color and those living in poverty. In her new book, “Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest in Post–Civil Rights America,” Dr. Casey Nichols examines the history and legacy of local, state, and national activism through the lens of Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles between 1964 and 1979. Casey D. Nichols is assistant professor of history at Texas State University. She is also an IRP Emerging Poverty Fellow.

The Clinton-era Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was a significant reform of the welfare system as it had been known. In this episode, Dr. Lucie Schmidt draws on her co-authored paper, “Did Welfare Reform End the Safety Net as We Knew It? The Record since 1996,” to describe the safety net landscape before 1996, and how specific programs and overall coverage have changed since welfare reform was put in place. Lucie Schmidt is the Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also an IRP Affiliate.

Many countries use direct cash aid programs as an integral part of their social safety net. In the United States, there have been few national efforts, but more and more guaranteed income programs are being implemented at state, county, and local levels. In this episode, Dr. Lisa Gennetian draws on her co-authored paper, “Unconditional Cash Transfers for Families with Children in the U.S.: A Scoping Review,” to provide an overview of cash assistance programs both in the US and in other countries, with a particular focus on programs aimed at families with children. Lisa Gennetian is the Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is also an IRP Affiliate.

There are many factors that influence whether Mexican immigrants to the United States are able to achieve upward mobility. In his new book, “Dreams Achieved and Denied: Mexican Intergenerational Mobility,” Robert Courtney Smith shares research conducted over twenty years and involving nearly one hundred children of Mexican immigrants in New York City. He examines how being documented or not acts as a master status, and how that is expressed through choices about education, employment, social networks, expressions of masculinity, and romantic and familial relationships.   Robert Courtney Smith is a Professor of Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs at the School of Public Affairs and in the Sociology Department at the Graduate Center at CUNY. 

Between 5% and 20% of children in the United States live with a disability. The definition and measurement of disability are constantly changing. Therefore, people with disabilities have been inadequately represented and understudied in research. In this episode, Molly Costanzo shares her research on the economic well-being for households with children with disabilities and recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to improve their quality of life. Molly Costanzo is a scientist at the Institute for Research on Poverty. She has a PhD in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses broadly on policies that support children and families.

There are many ways to assess the quality of care that pregnant people receive pre- and post-partum, as well as during delivery itself. Dr. Kathryn Thompson shares her findings on how the care that pregnant Black Medicaid enrollees receive compares to their more affluent white peers, and the policy and practice opportunities for addressing the social determinants of health that are involved.  Kathryn Thompson is an Assistant Professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health in the departments of Community Health Sciences and Health Law, Policy, and Management. She is also an IRP 2024–2025 Visiting Poverty Scholar. 

The federal Farm Bill expired at the end of September 2024 and was not reauthorized. Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been extended through a Continuing Resolution, but that is a stopgap measure. For this episode, Dr. Colleen Heflin joins us to discuss the recent policy brief that she co-authored with Camille Barbin, titled, “How Does the Reauthorization of the Farm Bill Impact SNAP?” Colleen Heflin is a Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She is also a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. She is also an IRP affiliate.

Menstrual poverty, or unmet menstrual hygiene needs, is defined as a lack of appropriate menstrual products in necessary quantities; access to soap and water for proper hygiene; or ways to dispose of or wash used sanitary materials. The experience of menstrual poverty can have far-reaching impacts on mental and physical health, the ability to work, and consistent school attendance. For this episode, Dr. Anne Sebert Kuhlmann discusses her research on the impacts of menstrual poverty, and what practice and policy options are available to alleviate the burden on menstruating people. Reference Papers:  The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Housing Affordability and the Living Arrangements of Families With Low Incomes  Students' Menstrual Hygiene Needs and School Attendance in an Urban St. Louis, Missouri, District Unmet Menstrual Hygiene Needs Among Low-Income Women

When the Child Tax Credit (CTC) was expanded in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 crisis, it provided more support to parents and on a monthly basis. In addition, some very low-income families were eligible to access the CTC for the first time. In this episode, Dr. Katherine Michelmore shares insights from the paper that she co-authored with Natasha Pilkauskas and Nicole Kovski, titled, “The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Housing Affordability and the Living Arrangements of Families With Low Incomes.”  Katherine Michelmore is an Associate Professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. A leading scholar and educator on the social safety net, education policy, labor economics, and economic demography, she is also an IRP Affiliate.  Paper to provide link for:  The Effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit on Housing Affordability and the Living Arrangements of Families With Low Incomes   

Black-Led Organizations (BLOs) are organizations led by an Executive Director and have a majority of full-time employees identifying as African American. BLOs face challenges (e.g., limited funding, diminished agency, exploitation) which can be explained through the framework of racialization. In this episode, Dr. Greg Wilson discusses his research paper titled “An Invisible Impediment to Progress: Perceptions of Racialization in the Nonprofit Sector” that analyzes racialization of BLOs in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Greg Wilson is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University, a previous IRP Graduate Research Fellow, and previous IRP Dissertation Fellow. He is interested in understanding how, why, and in what ways the nonprofit sector is racialized and how this system impacts the work of nonprofits led by people of color, particularly those led by African Americans. Reference Paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/08997640241252650  

Minimum wage workers, especially those with children, face barriers to affordable child care. Child care costs can prevent working parents who earn minimum wage from participating in the labor market. Alternately, many child-care workers also face financial barriers because they, too, earn minimal wages. Therefore, increasing the minimum wage would alleviate financial burdens for both parents and child-care workers. In this episode, both Dr. Anna Godøy and Dr. Jennie Romich discuss their research on minimum wage and its effects on parental labor supply and the child care sector. Anna Godøy is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research and an Associate Professor at the Department of Health Management and Health Economics at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research interests include empirical labor economics, health economics, and policy evaluation. Dr. Jennie Romich is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Washington, director of the West Coast Poverty C

There are more than 17 million renters in the rural Unites States. While popular perceptions of eviction may be that they are predominantly an urban issue, low-income rural renters face some unique challenges in finding and maintaining secure housing. Dr. Carl Gershenson shares insights from his extensive work on eviction, and in particular from the paper that he co-authored with Dr. Matthew Desmond, titled “Eviction and the Rental Housing Crisis in Rural America.” Carl Gershenson is Lab Director at The Eviction Lab at Princeton University. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of housing instability, with a special focus on how eviction leads to further economic and residential insecurity. 

Homeownership is one of the most common ways to accumulate wealth and promote intergenerational economic mobility in the United States. But even with laws and policies designed to ensure equal access to housing and financing, access to mortgage credit is far from equal. Factors like the race, gender, and age of the applicant can result in less favorable loan terms and higher rates of denial and default. Dr. José Loya discusses his research on how different demographic factors affect access to mortgage financing, and what policy and practice approaches might help to lessen inequity in this area. José Loya is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and a faculty affiliate with the Chicano Studies Research Center. He is also a 2023-2025 IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar.

COVID-19 interrupted life on multiple levels for many people regardless of race, economic class, or citizenship. For Latina mothers who either lacked legal status or were part of a mixed-status household, the pandemic intensified the challenges they faced even before this health and economic crisis. In their paper, “No Calm Before the Storm: Low-Income Latina Immigrant and Citizen Mothers Before and After COVID-19,” Dr. Marci Ybarra and Francia Mendoza Lua share insights gained through interviews with Latina moms in Chicago before and during the pandemic. Dr. Ybarra is an Associate Professor in the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an IRP Affiliate. Her research interests include welfare reform, paid family leave, the children of immigrants, and the socioeconomic well-being of low-income families.

Experiencing poverty in childhood can hinder a person’s opportunities throughout their own lifetime, and those of their children and grandchildren as well. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently released a report titled “Reducing Intergenerational Poverty.” For this episode, we're joined by Jesse Rothstein, who served as a member of the committee that produced the report. He shares the research and findings on several of the key drivers of intergenerational poverty that the committee identified and examined, as well as what policy approaches may help to interrupt the cycle and why that matters.  Dr. Jesse Rothstein is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he was Senior Economist at the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers and then Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. 

Black Meccas are cities where it appears that Black communities thrive more-so than other places in the United States. However, the housing values of Black-owned properties in these areas are substantially lower compared to their white counterparts, revealing the presence of wealth inequality even in cities where Black people are thought to experience better overall economic well-being. In this episode, Dr. Maretta McDonald discusses her recent co-authored paper “Wealth Matters: Home Ownership, Housing Values, and the Model Minority Myth of Black Meccas in the New South.” Maretta McDonald is a 2022-2024 IRP National Poverty Fellow and an Affiliate Faculty of Sociology at Virginia Tech. Her teaching and research focus on racial inequality, criminology, family, gender, and public policy. 

Where you live can affect the quality of education you receive, your chances of finding a good job, and even how long you might live. In their new book, “The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America,” Dr. Luke Shaefer and his co-authors Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson create a new way of looking at poverty, called the Index of Deep Disadvantage. Their team spends time in and learns about the communities that have the worst scores, and find that legacies of profound racism, extractive big industry, and crumbling social infrastructure contribute to generations of people struggling to thrive. But even in these communities that face multiple layers of challenge and trauma, there are rays of hope and residents determined to improve their lives and those of their neighbors. Luke Shaefer is an IRP Affiliate and the Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is a Professor of Social Work,

Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement is common, especially for children experiencing poverty, or who are Black or Native American. About a third of children are subject to a CPS investigation before their 18th birthday, but research shows reducing child poverty could help change this. In this episode, Dr. Jessica Pac discusses the recent paper she co-authored titled, “The Effects of Child Poverty Reductions on Child Protective Services Involvement.”     Jessica Pac is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Pac’s research broadly harnesses applied econometric and data science methods to provide novel insight on mandatory reporting behaviors and the effects of antipoverty and work-family policy supports on maternal employment, safety and health, and infant and child safety and health.