Socioeconomic Status

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What Would It Take to Close America's Black-White Wealth Gap?

White Americans hold ten times more total wealth than Black Americans, a disparity that has worsened in recent decades. RAND researchers modeled wealth across millions of households and tested several funding scenarios to see which could most effectively close the gap.

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The Inflation Pain You Don't See

Official statistics don't capture the pain of inflation for many Americans. That's because there's something wrong with how we define the middle class. Far more American households earn a middle-class income than enjoy a middle-class lifestyle.

George Zuo @GeorgeWZuo

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A Potential Russian Attack on NATO, China in the Arctic, Inflation: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on how the West might respond in the case of a limited Russian attack on NATO, what China's Arctic ambitions mean to the United States, how inflation affects middle-class households, and more.

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To Help African Americans Gain Generational Wealth, Look to the Housing Market

African American families have significantly less wealth than White families, even after reaching the middle class. Home ownership is, for the vast majority of Americans, the primary vehicle for accruing wealth, and passing it down through generations. This is a crucial time for policymakers to consider policies that focus on improving home ownership rates for African Americans.

Jessica Welburn Paige

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Most Americans Consider Themselves Middle-Class. But Are They?

There are different ways of determining who should be considered middle-class. But there is one thing they have in common: All reveal that the middle class in the United States is shrinking.

Jeffrey B. Wenger, Melanie A. Zaber @MelanieZaber

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Biden's Child Tax Credit Will Bring Lifetime of Improvement

The American Rescue Plan is expected to cut child poverty in the United States by more than 40 percent. The benefits are important to families today and could be compounded over the hundred years these children are expected to live.

Krishna B. Kumar, Andrew R. Hoehn @AndyHoehn, et al.

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A Message from Our President and CEO, America's Wealth Gap, Disinformation: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on doing more to address systemic inequalities and structural racism, paying the bills during COVID-19, America's growing wealth gap, and more.

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Discipline Disparities and Discrimination in Schools

In the United States, black and poor students are suspended at much higher rates than their white and non-poor peers. While the existence of these disparities is not controversial, how to interpret the disparities is bitterly disputed.

Nathan Barrett, Andrew McEachin, et al.

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Why Being a Migrant Is Not the Biggest Barrier to Education in Europe

Migrant students tend to have lower performance and are more likely to leave school early. But factors other than migrant status, such as language barriers, can explain these differences.

Barbara Janta, Emma Harte

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College Education No Panacea for Worker Inequality Woes

The earnings gap between high school and college graduates has grown with each generation, but even a college degree does not ensure a good income. Just as the nature of jobs for high school graduates has been changing due to consolidation, trade, and technology, the quality of employment for college graduates is beginning to shift.

Carter C. Price @CarterCPrice

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Fixing Inequality of Opportunity

Research has fueled concerns about how income inequality drives inequality of opportunity. Commonsense approaches such as improvements in education and access to quality health care have been shown to provide young people with better opportunities.

Carter C. Price @CarterCPrice

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Do Young 'Elites' Favor Income Redistribution?

Young 'elites' -- employed Americans who are 40 or younger, with high household incomes and graduate degrees -- and especially Democratic elites have a strong preference for income redistribution.

Michael S. Pollard @MichaelSPollard, Katherine Grace Carman

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Community-Driven Development: How the Poor Can Take Charge to Improve Their Housing

Public housing projects have been controversial for decades in countries around the world. But an informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa, could serve as a guide for other countries experimenting with community-driven development, an alternative approach to public housing.

Julia Pollak

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What's Behind the Obesity Epidemic? Easily Accessible Food, and Lots of It

That no group is immune to rising obesity rates suggests that universal environmental factors are driving the trend. The clearest change concerns food availability and cost.

Roland Sturm

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RAND Convenes Experts to Examine Role of Technology in Early Childhood Education

The forum focused on several key issues underlying successful integration of technology into early childhood settings, including the goals that should be established for technology use, the infrastructure that is needed to support effective technology use, and the role of teachers and parents in facilitating technology use.

Lindsay Daugherty

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Building a Resilient Europe to Face Future Societal Changes to 2030

Future “societal” trends, ranging from the future of the labor market to the evolving relationship between citizens and the state, are shrouded in uncertainty, which makes it difficult to develop robust, sensible predictions. A RAND Europe report analyzes global societal trends to 2030 and their impact on the EU.

Benoit Guerin, Daniel Schweppenstedde

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The Fed and Inequality

Pretax income inequality has been driven by long-term societal trends that are numerous, complex, and hard to change. They include education, parenting and family structure, neighborhood, immigration, globalization, and IT-based technology.

Charles Wolf, Jr.

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A Long-Term View for the EU: The Health of Nations

By shifting the strategic focus beyond growth and jobs, the successor of the current Europe 2020 Strategy should aim to invest in human capital and avoid sluggish productivity growth achieved at the expense of social inclusion, public health, education and skills, security or freedom.

Stijn Hoorens @StijnHoorens

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What Drives Income Inequality?

The mixed picture of income inequality around the world reinforces the point that it is more important to know the underlying explanations for inequality across countries and within them, rather than the amount of inequality or changes in it, write Charles Wolf, Jr., and John Godges.

Charles Wolf, Jr., John P. Godges

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The Inequality Debate

The inequality debate should focus more on the sources and reasons for inequality, and less on how much inequality there is, or how much it has changed, writes Charles Wolf, Jr.

Charles Wolf, Jr.