Poverty Research & Policy

Reparations for Black Americans is not a new idea—before the U.S. Civil War had ended, there was a proposal to provide freed Black people with “40 acres and a mule.” That did not materialize, and in the ensuing century and a half, the Black descendants of formerly enslaved people have faced systemic injustices, discrimination, and violence. In this episode, Professor William “Sandy” Darity, Jr. and Kirsten Mullen explain what a meaningful reparations program for Black Americans would entail, how eligibility should be determined, and why the federal government is both the “culpable and capable party.” Sandy Darity is the Samuel Dubois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, African and African-American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. He is also an IRP Affiliate. Professor Darity's research focuses broadly on stratification; economics on inequality by race, class, and ethnicity; and the economics of reparations. Kirsten Mullen is a writer, folklorist, museum consultant, and lecturer whose work

Many people suffer from not getting enough sleep from time to time. But for many people of color and those who are living in low-income neighborhoods and housing, additional factors may contribute to chronic poor sleep quality. Those factors can have long-term impacts on their health and well-being, including higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, obesity, and depression.  In this episode, Dr. Dayna Johnson shares her research into how experiences of racism, variable work schedules, and neighborhood conditions contribute to sleep and health inequities for African Americans. Dr. Johnson is a sleep epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University. Her research is aimed at understanding the causes and health consequences of sleep health disparities.

Wisconsin is one of a few states with a Birth Cost Recovery program, which bills unmarried, non-custodial fathers for the birth costs of their child when the mother is on Medicaid. But the impacts of these policies on the children and both parents have not been studied closely.  In this episode, Dr. Tiffany Green discusses the report that she co-authored titled, “Effects Of Medicaid Birth Cost Recovery Policy Changes On Child Support Outcomes,” which draws on IRP’s Wisconsin Administrative Data Core (WADC). Tiffany Green is an associate professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology within the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an IRP Affiliate.

Whether renters have access to safe, high-quality housing has serious implications for health and health equity. Local housing policy often focuses on community residents’ particular needs, yet state law can preempt local ordinances, frequently with detrimental results. In this episode, Dr. Jamila Michener discusses two of her recent papers, “Entrenching Inequity, Eroding Democracy: State Preemption of Local Housing Policy” and "Racism, Power, And Health Equity: The Case of Tenant Organizing.” Jamila Michener is an Associate Professor of Government and Public Policy at Cornell University. She studies poverty, racism, and public policy, with a particular focus on health and housing. She is Associate Dean for Public Engagement at the Brooks School of Public Policy. Dr. Michener has also been named the inaugural director of Cornell’s Racial Justice and Equitable Futures Center. She is a former IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar Fellow and a current IRP Affiliate.

Family child care is the care of non-relative children within the providers' home. Thirty percent of family child care professionals are women of color, and oftentimes the cultural assets they contribute to the field of early care and education are diminished or disregarded. In this episode, Dr. Crystasany Turner discusses her research highlighting both the strengths and challenges faced by family child care professionals, future research, and practices to support family child care professionals. Crystasany Turner is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Rooted in Black feminist epistemologies, her teaching and research focus on culturally sustaining and liberatory practices in early childhood education and teacher education. 

In his new book, Dr. Zachary Parolin explores three perspectives on poverty—poverty as a risk factor, poverty as an expression of access to current resources, and poverty as a stratifying factor—and how they affected people during the COVID-19 pandemic. He advocates for policy approaches that will both prepare us for the next large-scale economic disruption and provide timely assistance when upheaval occurs, and makes the case for more frequent, and more nuanced poverty measures. Zach Parolin is an Assistant Professor of Social Policy at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, and a Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. His new book, “Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19,” was published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

The federal government established a temporary water assistance program to alleviate the burden of water costs on households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Establishing a permanent water assistance program can increase long-term water affordability for households. In this episode, Dr. Manny Teodoro discusses the report he co-authored for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies that assessed options for a permanent federal water assistance program and shares how extending SNAP benefits would help increase water affordability.   Manny Teodoro is the Robert and Sylvia Wagner Professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on U.S. environmental policy and implementation, as well as utility management, policy, and finance. 

There are known protective factors that can help young people exiting foster care to thrive by reducing or eliminating the challenges that they often face. By measuring resilience over time, and viewing it as “a state, not a trait,” there is more opportunity to create networks and systems to support these young people as they transition to adulthood. In this episode, Dr. Svetlana Shpiegel discusses her co-authored paper, “Resilient Outcomes among Youth Aging-Out of Foster Care: Findings from the National Youth in Transition Database,” and shares how she and her colleagues assessed sustained resilience, periodic resilience, and sustained non-resilience among young adults exiting care, and why policies like Extended Foster Care are vital. Svetlana Shpiegel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Child Advocacy at Montclair State University. Her research interests include adolescents transitioning from foster care, child abuse and neglect, risk and resilience among vulnerable populations,

While non-standard work is not a new concept, technology has fueled a recent rise in independent contracting, freelancing, temporary, on-call, and “gig" work. Much of the research on non-standard work has focused on its precarious nature and lower economic security for active workers. In her recent paper, "The Retirement Implications of Non-Standard Work," Dr. Mina Addo turns her attention to the impacts on retirement security for the large numbers of U.S. workers are participating in non-standard work alone or in addition to traditional employment.  Dr. Addo is an IRP National Poverty Fellow in residence at the Office of Planning Research and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She completed her Ph.D. in social welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice and is a qualitative researcher with experience with mixed methods studies. This paper was funded through a 2022 Junior Scholars and Training Research Award from the Retirement and Disability R

Probation is often considered to be a kinder, gentler alternative to incarceration. But there are significant financial and emotional costs associated with home confinement that affect not just the person who is under supervision, but their families and communities as well. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Brittany Battle. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University and is also the co-founder of Triad Abolition Project, a grassroots organization based in Winston-Salem, NC. Dr. Battle is also an IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar, and her project during that fellowship is to examine the experiences of low-income people and communities in diverse judicial settings and forms of community supervision and confinement.

Self-employment can be a choice, or undertaken by necessity. In the United States, on average, 10 to 12% of the labor force is engaged in some form of self-employment. That proportion can be higher in times of economic downturns, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. But low- and middle-income workers face many obstacles to being successful in their entrepreneurial activities. In this episode, Dr. Daniel Auguste joins us to discuss the paper that he co-authored with Stephen Roll and Mathieu Despard, titled “The Precarity of Self-Employment among Low- and Moderate-Income Households.” Dr. Auguste explains how self-employment can bring rewards, but also entails assuming significant risks. And for low- and middle-income entrepreneurs, professional networks and access to financing and other necessary supportive services may be difficult to attain.   Dr. Daniel Auguste is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida Atlantic University and is currently an MLK Visiting Assistant Professor in the MIT Sloan School o

Estimates are that 20–50% of people eligible for social safety net programs don’t access them. While there may be many factors contributing to that gap, recent research has focused on the role that stigma plays. In this episode, Dr. Elizabeth Linos joins us to discuss the paper she co-authored with Jessica Lasky-Fink, titled “It's Not Your Fault: Reducing Stigma Increases Take Up of Government Programs.” Stigma can be direct or anticipated from the wider society, including from agency workers with whom people would need to interact in order to access services. Stigmatizing messages can be internalized as shame or guilt for simply needing services. Through research with municipalities doing outreach for housing assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Linos and her colleagues found that small changes can significantly increase uptake of services simply by destigmatizing the language. Dr. Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management, and Faculty Director of The

Official measures of homelessness seem to indicate that the Latinx community is less affected than most other minoritized racial groups. But this aspect of what is called “The Latinx Paradox” might in fact be due to the extent of homelessness in Latinx communities being obscured by other factors. In this episode, Dr. Deyanira Nevarez Martinez shares her research into the nuances of Latinx housing precarity, and why understanding the Latinx experience of homelessness is vital for effective public policy and human services provision. Dr. Nevarez Martinez is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University and a core faculty member in Chicano Latino studies. She is also an IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar. Professor Nevarez Martinez's December 2022 IRP seminar presentation.

In this episode, we hear from Hope Harvey about doubled-up households in the United States and why she thinks we should be paying more attention to the situations of people who are living in shared households. Professor Harvey is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of Kentucky, where she is a research affiliate at the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research. She's also a 2022-2023 IRP Visiting Poverty Scholar. In the episode, Professor Harvey discusses two papers: Hope Harvey, Rachel Dunifon, and Natasha Pilkauskas. Under whose roof? Understanding the living arrangements of children in doubled-up households. Demography. 2021; 58(3): 821-846. Hope Harvey. When Mothers Can’t "Pay the Cost to Be the Boss": Roles and Identity within Doubled-up Households. Social Problems. 2020

High levels of segregation can have significant impacts on communities and the individuals living in them. New research uses railroad tracks as a measure of segregation and overlays data on homicide deaths to determine if people of color living in highly segregated communities are more at risk. In this episode, Dr. Jamein Cunningham shares the findings in the paper he co-authored with Robynn Cox, Alberto Ortega and Kenneth D. Whaley titled "Black Lives: The High Cost of Segregation." Cunningham is an assistant professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University and an IRP Emerging Poverty Scholar Fellow.

In this episode, we hear from Nidia Bañuelos about how we can better value and measure the assets that college students from low income and traditionally underserved backgrounds bring to their education and to their later careers. Bañuelos is an assistant professor in the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an IRP Affiliate. You can find recent work from Bañuelos and colleagues on using Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) frameworks to measure assets and social networks of college students though the Networks and Cultural Assets Project (NACA).      

Labor unions receive relatively little attention in U.S. poverty research and our guest for this episode, Professor David Brady, says that this is an unfortunate omission. His research in a paper with Tom VanHeuvelen finds that being in a household with a union member and even being in a state with higher rates of union membership are both correlated with a lower likelihood of being in poverty. Brady says we should pay attention to the role of unions because "political power drives the policies you get, and the policies you get drive the amount of poverty you have in society.” David Brady is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside.  

When it comes to cash transfer programs like welfare for single parents and especially mothers, most of the evaluation and economic modeling efforts have focused on how those programs impact the amount of paid work single parents do. However, there's been less attention to the value of parental time and how that matters for children's development. For this podcast episode, we hear from economist Joseph Mullins of the University of Minnesota, who developed an economic model for U.S. cash transfer programs that attempts to place an accurate value on parents' time when assessing cash transfers programs. He says his model suggests a very different structure for our cash transfer programs if we want to best balance children's need for money resources and parental time for their healthy development.  Link to the paper: http://www.josephlyonmullins.com/DesigningCashTransfers_Children_Draft.pdf    

The Biden administration's plan to alleviate federal student loan debt has the potential to reduce the debt of approximately 43 million Americans, and almost half of those borrowers will have their debt forgiven completely. The move has prompted praise from some, and strong criticism from others. In this episode, we’re joined by Professor Nick Hillman, who studies educational inequality, college affordability, and student loan debt and default. Hillman is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also directs the Student Success through Applied Research Lab, which is a research-practice partnership with the university's Division of Enrollment Management and Office of Student Financial Aid. Hillman is also a faculty affiliate at IRP and at the La Follette School of Public Affairs.

IRP recently hosted Dr. Noni Gaylord-Harden, Dr. Jocelyn Smith Lee,  and Dr. Alvin Thomas for a webinar conversation on Youth Trauma and Resilience in Contexts of Poverty. They discussed how a growing body of research has begun to change understandings of how toxic environments can affect young people, particularly African American boys and young men and how research, policy, and practice can incorporate these lessons. More information about the webinar can be found at https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/youth-trauma-and-resilience-in-contexts-of-poverty/.