Reducing inequality will require research to identify effective policies, programs, and practices that respond to this fundamental challenge. In 2014, the Foundation launched a ten-year initiative to spur this research, supporting studies that examine responses to inequality in youth outcomes and opportunities along a number of dimensions.
Recently Added Resources
-
Identifying Responses to Inequality: The Potential of Qualitative and Mixed-Methods Research
We believe that qualitative and mixed-methods research is essential to building, understanding, testing, and improving responses to inequality—be they programs, policies, or practices.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
From Big Data to Useful Research Evidence: Forging a Path Toward Better Youth Outcomes
What steps can we take to ensure that access to big data leads to the production of high-quality, useful research evidence? And what else do we need to know to ensure that this evidence is ultimately used by decision makers in ways that benefit youth?
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
Inequality and Opportunity: The Role of Exclusion, Social Capital, and Generic Social Processes in Upward Mobility
While many macro-level policies and interventions to address poverty are essential to the survival of the poor, a closer consideration of how these policies or programs are experienced at the individual level, and how micro processes, relationships, interactions, and discourse promote or inhibit opportunity, may improve efforts to reduce inequality by identifying and ultimately removing barriers to social capital for those who need it the most.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
Investing in Knowledge: Insights on the Funding Landscape for Research on Inequality Among Young People in the United States
Investing in Knowledge highlights the complexity of inequality by highlighting its different distinctions and definitions, and outlines the dominant approaches of funding organizations who support research on youth inequality in the U.S. Finally, drawing on an understanding of the current landscape, Bruch offers three strategies for advancing efforts to understand and address youth inequality.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
The Future of Educational Inequality: What Went Wrong and How Can We Fix It?
Education is a gateway for opportunity—a pathway to progress through which young people acquire the skills, knowledge, and experiences to obtain good jobs and prosperous futures. Yet in the U.S., education is highly unequal. On average, students from minority backgrounds, immigrant origins, and economically disadvantaged families leave school earlier, receive fewer degrees and certificates, and exhibit lower academic skills than their more privileged peers. To address these inequalities, we need research that identifies effective responses to the challenges that give rise to unequal opportunities and outcomes.
Reducing InequalityEducation -
Disparities in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Mental Health Services in the U.S.
Margarita Alegría and colleagues investigate disparities in mental health and mental health services for minority youth. Taking a developmental perspective, the authors explore four areas that may give rise to inequalities in mental health outcomes, highlight specific protective factors and barriers to care, and, finally, outline an agenda for future research.
Reducing InequalityChild Mental Health -
Intersecting Inequalities: Research to Reduce Inequality for Immigrant-Origin Children and Youth
Carola Suárez-Orozco and colleagues explore how inequality plays out along six dimensions of disadvantage particular to immigrant-origin families. The authors outline how developments in educational and family contexts can alleviate unequal outcomes and opportunities, and introduce four broad areas of future research that may inform policies, programs, and practices to reduce inequality for immigrant-origin children and youth.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
The New Forgotten Half and Research Directions to Support Them
In “The New Forgotten Half and Research Directions to Support Them,” James Rosenbaum and colleagues find that many young people who enroll in community college fail to complete their studies and attain a degree, and that these youth fare no better in the labor market than those with only a high school diploma. Using data from the nationally representative Educational Longitudinal Survey (ELS), the authors examine the circumstances of youth who drop out of community college before attaining a credential, discuss institutional challenges in the era of increased college access, and outline a research agenda to help youth move beyond "some college" and achieve their potential.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
Understanding Inequality and the Justice System Response: Charting a New Way Forward
What do we know about inequality in the justice system? What can researchers do about it? John Laub, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, and former Director of the National Institute of Justice, provides timely insights into these questions, and explores the intersections of inequality, crime, and the justice system in his new report—the second in our series on inequality.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
Inequality Matters
Talk of inequality, particularly economic inequality, in the public sphere is commonplace in twenty-first century America. Indeed, various aspects of social inequality—race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and immigrant status—have been the subject of protest, debate, legislation, and judicial action for much of the last century. Inequality in its various forms—and what to do about it, if anything—is often the animating force behind much of contemporary political debates and social movements. These debates take place against a backdrop of fitful progress and retreat in America’s long struggle with inequality.
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality -
Restoring Opportunity
Published by Harvard Education Press and the Russell Sage Foundation, "Restoring Opportunity lays out a meticulously researched case for how targeted interventions and support can significantly level the playing field between low-income children and their more fortunate peers."
Reducing InequalityEducation -
Inequality is the Problem: Prioritizing Research on Reducing Inequality
Substantial new efforts are needed to identify approaches that will reduce inequality in youth outcomes so that a generation from now, both the degree of inequality in society and the effects of inequality on outcomes for youth will have diminished.
Reducing Inequality -
Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances
Published by the Russell Sage Foundation, "this pioneering volume casts a stark light on the ways rising inequality may now be compromising schools’ functioning, and with it the promise of equal opportunity in America."
Reducing InequalityEducation -
Best Practices in Conceptualizing and Measuring Social Class in Psychological Research
“An extensive body of research has documented the relation between social class, as indexed by socioeconomic status (SES) and subjective social status (SSS), and a host of outcomes, including physical and mental health, academic achievement, and educational attainment. Yet, there remains ambiguity regarding how best to conceptualize and measure social class. This article clarifies definitional […]
Reducing InequalityDirections for Research: Reducing Inequality
Categories
- Reducing Inequality (14)
- Research Methods (16)
- Use of Research Evidence (27)
- Youth Social Settings (9)
Tags
- After-school Programs (4)
- Analyzing Multilevel Trials (3)
- Child Mental Health (3)
- Child Welfare (5)
- Directions for Research: Reducing Inequality (10)
- Directions for Research: the Use of Research Evidence (4)
- Education (20)
- Evidence-Based Policy (9)
- Group Randomized Trials (10)
- Higher Education (1)
- Immigration (1)
- Justice System (1)
- Research-Practice Partnerships (8)
- Tools (7)