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 ...
Mar 14, 2023•21 min
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...
Feb 27, 2023•26 min
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 paper...
Dec 06, 2022•23 min
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 ." Cunningha...
Nov 21, 2022•22 min
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 ...
Oct 26, 2022•26 min
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 ...
Oct 11, 2022•30 min
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...
Sep 15, 2022•30 min
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 Educat...
Aug 31, 2022•27 min
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/...
Aug 18, 2022•1 hr 4 min
For this episode, we hear from Dr. Casey Stockstill about research she did to better understand economic and racial segregation in preschools. Dr. Stockstill spent time observing in two highly rated preschools in the same city: One was a Head Start location where nearly all of the children were students of color and from lower income families and the other was a private preschool in a more affluent part of town where nearly all the students were white and from higher income families. Her observa...
Jul 25, 2022•35 min
2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low Wage Work, by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein. The book was based on interviews with low-income single moms that took place between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Edin and Lein detailed the women's household budgets, the strategies they used to support their families, and the unforgiving choice between welfare and low-wage work. In this episode, we hear from Kathryn Edin about what she...
Jun 15, 2022•39 min
Where we get information about money and how to manage it can have long-lasting impacts on financial security and wealth accumulation. While there are some commonly shared sources of information that shape our attitudes and beliefs, there are also some significant differences across racial and ethnic groups. In this episode, Dr. Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana joins us to discuss her recent paper titled, “ Race and the Financial Toolkit: Bridging Cultural Theories to Understand Behavior and Decision Makin...
Jun 02, 2022•25 min
In this episode of the Poverty Research & Policy Podcast, we hear from Brieanna Watters and Robert Stewart about a paper they coauthored* on Native Americans and Monetary Sanctions involving the criminal legal system. They discuss how Native American experiences in relation to the legal system are often unique, how the rural nature of Indian Country matters when it comes to policies around fines and fees, and how their research in Minnesota finds higher levels of fines and fees for Native Am...
May 16, 2022•35 min
In this episode, we hear from José Pacas about data challenges involved in measuring rural poverty in the Supplemental Poverty Measure or SPM and how the subtleties of poverty measurement can have real world implications for the lived experiences of low-income people in rural places. Dr. Pacas is currently serving on a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel on Evaluation and Improvements to the Supplemental Poverty Measure. He is Chief of Data Science and Research at Kids ...
Apr 29, 2022•35 min
People experiencing homelessness are more often part of the background in movies than featured as the protagonists. But when they are the focus of a film, the ways that they and those who feel moved to help them are portrayed can have a big impact on how the public and policymakers think about homelessness and possible solutions. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Whitney Gent about what she and her coauthor found in their analysis of films featuring homeless characters from 1983 to 2018, and in ...
Mar 21, 2022•34 min
When the pandemic hit, many people who study child maltreatment, abuse, and neglect were worried that some children might be at greater risk due to more time at home and other factors that the pandemic could exacerbate. But at the same time, many children had less access to other adults who might be able to notice if something was wrong. For this episode, we talked with Dr. Lindsey Bullinger of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy about how she and her colleagues went about trying to measure r...
Mar 02, 2022•19 min
In this episode, we hear from Professor Prentiss Dantzler about how perceptions of who lives in public housing – and who deserves that type of support – have developed over the past century, and how that has affected the urban poor and particularly people of color. His research includes reviewing the congressional testimony around the issue of providing housing for returning World War II GIs. Dantzler is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a former IRP Visiting S...
Feb 07, 2022•20 min
In this episode, we hear from Dr. Quentin Riser about how family income instability in early childhood affects children's school readiness and later outcomes. He talks about how administrative data, such as in the Wisconsin Administrative Data Core , can offer a more complete picture of the financial ups and downs that young families face, and how that can matter for children later on in school....
Jan 20, 2022•19 min•Ep. 107
IRP recently had the privilege of hosting New York Times reporter and author Andrea Elliott and NYU Professor of Social Work Darcey Merritt for a conversation about Elliot’s book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City . They talked about the family in the book, the child welfare system and race, how we think about meeting the needs of children, and how we can do better....
Jan 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 106
When the pandemic hit the United States in March of 2020, Anna Gassman-Pines and her colleague Elizabeth Ananat were already conducting a text message survey among service workers who had children. As early-pandemic lockdowns and business closures began, Gassman-Pines and Ananat were able to pivot and began asking the people they were surveying about job and income loss, challenges that stemmed from school and childcare shifts, whether they were able to access government benefits, and about thei...
Dec 20, 2021•16 min•Ep. 105
For this episode of the Poverty Research and Policy Podcast, we hear from Professor Amy Castro about the concept of Basic Income, and what she and her team are learning from data coming in from pilot projects around the country. Professor Castro is Founding Director of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research and an Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. --- Transcript: Judith Siers-Poisson: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the poverty research ...
Dec 15, 2021•35 min•Ep. 104
In this episode we hear from Dr. Amelie Hecht about universal free school meal programs and how the pandemic may have shifted the outlook for this kind of program. Dr. Hecht is a fellow in the IRP National Poverty Fellows Program where she is in residence at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation at the federal Administration for Children and Families. Transcript: Dave Chancellor: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the Poverty Research and Policy podcast from the Institute for Researc...
Nov 29, 2021•15 min
For this episode of the Poverty Research and Policy Podcast, we hear from Juan Pedroza about immigration in the United States, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and how place matters when it comes to thinking about immigrant health. Pedroza is an Assistant Professor of Demography, Migration and Inequality in the Sociology Department at the University of California Santa Cruz and was a fellow in IRP's Emerging Poverty Scholars Program. You can find more of Professor Pedroza's work at www.socialdemography.xy...
Nov 17, 2021•24 min
In this episode, Judi Bartfeld shares how the COVID-19 pandemic, and the social safety net’s response to it, has affected food insecurity in the United States. She also explains how the permanent increase in SNAP benefits that took effect October 1, 2021, fits into the larger picture of ensuring that people have consistent access to nourishing foods. Dr. Bartfeld is a professor in the School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison and is also a food security research and policy specialist in the Division...
Oct 15, 2021•27 min
In this episode, Mustafa Hussein talks about living wage ordinances that were passed in the 1990s and 2000s in cities across the United States. These ordinances were only directed at relatively small groups of lower wage workers in these cities, but Dr. Hussein and his team set out to see if these smaller ordinances would have larger impacts on these local labor markets. Dr. Hussein is an assistant professor of health policy and economics at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of P...
Sep 30, 2021•26 min
In this episode, we hear from IRP Affiliate J. Michael Collins , Professor of Public Affairs and Consumer Science at UW-Madison and the director of the Center for Financial Security. He talks about whether parents from different racial and ethnic groups and with varying income levels are more or less likely to give their children an allowance. He also explains what parents might be hoping to achieve by giving their child money that they manage themselves, and whether that translates into more fi...
Sep 13, 2021•21 min
In this episode we hear from Adrian Huerta of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Huerta shares his research that came from talking to gang-associated youth in high school, what their education experiences looked like, and how that translated to what they thought about the options they had when it came to going to college.
Jul 01, 2021•28 min
For this episode, we hear from Maia Cucchiara, a professor of Urban Education at Temple University. She talks about low-income mothers’ experiences with parenting education courses, which are designed to teach parenting techniques and about things like child development. They might be offered in schools or community settings and participation is sometimes voluntary, sometimes included as part of participation in other programs, and sometimes mandated as part of a court decision, for example. The...
Jun 15, 2021•27 min
There's a sort of conventional wisdom that during recessions, more people enroll in college or stay in college longer when jobs are scarce. But it's not clear that this "benefit" extends to everyone. In this episode, Howard University economist Andria Smythe talks about her research looking at how college outcomes of young adults shifted during a recession and how she found that those from disadvantaged backgrounds' levels of college completion were hurt more during a recession....
May 17, 2021•16 min
In this episode, we hear from IRP Director Katherine Magnuson about components of the just-released American Families Plan. Magnuson discusses parental leave, funding for child care, universal pre-kindergarten, and expansions of child tax credits. She says efforts to support parents and invest in families can help them to meet their goals and do what they want to do for their children and for themselves.
May 07, 2021•18 min
