Poverty Research & Policy Institute for Research on Poverty

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, and the Director of Poverty Solutions, also at the University of Michigan.

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.

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 focuses on race, art, history, and politics. Together they are the authors of "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century," and are also two of the editors of "The Black Reparations Project, A Handbook for Racial Justice."