Poverty Research & Policy

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. Da...

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.

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.   

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 fr...

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 Pennsylva...

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:  Hell...

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 Emergin...

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 Hu...

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 assistan...

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 ach...

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.

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 p...

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 disadv...

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 them...

In this episode, we hear from Joshua Wright, Community Project Coordinator with the  Cancer Health Disparities Initiative  at the UW Carbone Cancer Center. Wright shares the importance of making and keeping connections within the community both for educational and career purposes, and how getting involved with local efforts can lead to valuable experiences and relationships.

In this episode, we hear from Kadijha Marquardt-Davis, who was a legislative assistant in the Wisconsin State Legislature at the time of the interview and has since become policy advisor for a representative in the legislature. In the interview, Marquardt-Davis talks about how she became interested in policy, tips for transitioning from school to the professional world, and the importance of findi...

In this episode we hear from Kim Sutter, Director of Services for Porchlight, which is the largest provider of low-cost housing and homeless services in Dane County, Wisconsin. Sutter holds an undergraduate degree in social work from UW-Madison and shares her career path to oversees multiple programs as well as a large staff and volunteers. She also explains how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the...

A striking number of women, and especially moms, have left the U.S. labor force since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In this podcast episode, labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards talks about some of the patterns she's seen around why women are leaving the labor force and how the lack of support for working parents could roll back the gains we've seen in women's work and the economic benefi...

In the last few decades, there has been a major expansion in the number of states and localities offering full-day kindergarten. In this podcast episode, economist Chloe Gibbs of the University of Notre Dame talks about how these expansions impacted academic achievement and outcomes at the school district level.   

In this episode, Timothy Smeeding talks about proposals from Senator Mitt Romney and from Democratic leadership for a fully refundable monthly child tax credit or child allowance and how these types of policies could reduce child poverty and help working parents in the pandemic and beyond. Smeeding is the Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the La Follette Scho...

In this episode we hear from Jacob Faber of New York University about a federal government program called the Home Owners' Loan Corporation that started in the 1930s and how the decisions made in that program promoted residential segregation that is still with us today.

The goal of reducing incarceration has been gaining traction for at least the last decade in the United States. In an interview we did with sociologist Pamela Oliver in late 2020, she talked about how we got to where we are today when it comes to U.S. imprisonment (Part 1) and the impact that different reforms would have on reducing the U.S. prison population (Part 2).  The interview is based on a...

The goal of reducing incarceration has been gaining traction for at least the last decade in the United States. In an interview we did with sociologist Pamela Oliver in late 2020, she talked about how we got to where we are today when it comes to U.S. imprisonment and the impact that different reforms would have on reducing the U.S. prison population. This is part 1 of the interview.  The intervie...

In this episode, Carolyn Heinrich of Vanderbilt University talks about a study she conducted with Jennifer Darling-Aduana, Annalee Good, and Huiping (Emily) Cheng that looked at the use of online education products in high schools to help students who were falling behind. Heinrich describes her team's observations of online course-taking and the longer-term academic and labor market outcomes of st...

In this episode we hear from Eleanor Pratt, a grant writer with the Heartland Alliance and recent graduate of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pratt talks about the importance of developing writing and editing skills, what she's learned from her experiences, and the challenge of doing anti-poverty work.