RAND’s work on racial equity policy is growing and extends across disciplines and research areas. As one way to demonstrate RAND’s commitment to advancing equity, several projects focused on racial and ethnic equity were funded in late 2020 by gifts from RAND supporters, income from operations, and independent research and development provisions of RAND’s contracts for the operation of its U.S. Department of Defense federally funded research and development centers. This slate of RAND-initiated research is currently underway, addressing critical policy questions in education, environmental policy, health care, the justice system, military service members and veterans, and national security.
Racial Equity Policy Research: Q&A SeriesRAND researchers examined the ways in which military service might be correlated with certain health, economic, and social outcomes for Black Americans and explored several factors that could be meaningful to their health and well-being.
This study examines opportunities for leveraging diversity to enhance military effectiveness. A framework is presented to help guide the UK and US Armed Forces in their assessments of how diversity may be better leveraged in future.
This report models numbers of undocumented and asylum-seeking children crossing the U.S. southwest border, reviews the federal and state policy landscapes for their education, and provides case studies of how schools are managing education for them.
RAND researchers assessed how the current increase in undocumented and asylum-seeking children across the U.S. southwest border may affect the K–12 school system and conducted case studies of how schools are managing education for these students.
This report presents a stylized model of wealth accumulation that accounts for patterns in income and wealth shown in prior research to illustrate how various factors contribute to Black-white wealth differences.
The wealth gap between Black and white Americans is the result of inequities compounded over time. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data, the authors analyze the wealth gap and the potential impacts of disparity-reducing wealth-allocation policies.
The position of middle-class African Americans remains precarious despite post-Civil Rights era gains. In this report, the author reviews research on the factors that may contribute to the downward mobility rates of middle-class African Americans.
In this report, researchers use data on speeding violations in Virginia to examine whether there are racial disparities in who benefits from the discretion of law enforcement and the courts to discount or downgrade misdemeanor violations.
Using data on speeding violations in Virginia, researchers examine whether there are racial disparities in who benefits from the discretion of law enforcement and the courts to discount or downgrade misdemeanor violations.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans have faced a wave of anti-Asian racism and hate incidents. The authors assess knowledge gaps around such racism and associated acts of violence and propose possible solutions to address it.
Researchers illustrate the ways in which small effects of racial bias can compound over lifetimes. Users of this tool can adjust the amount of racial bias to see its effects on educational achievement, income growth, and wealth accumulation.
Researchers developed an online tool for visualizing the spatial relationships between the discriminatory practice of redlining and exposure to environmental hazards (e.g., pollution, waste sites).
Recent polls show that Black Americans are less willing than Americans of other races or ethnicities to be vaccinated for COVID-19. RAND researchers surveyed Black Americans to better understand the drivers of such hesitancy.
High mistrust among Black Americans around COVID-19 vaccines may lower vaccine confidence.
To identify approaches to increase vaccine confidence and uptake among Black Americans, RAND Corporation researchers conducted a national survey with 207 Black participants in November 2020.
This event, "Vaccine Confidence and Black Communities: Where do we go from here?", aimed to share lessons learned about COVID-19 vaccine messaging and access in order to reduce inequities.
COVID-19 vaccination rates among Black Americans have been lower than White Americans and are disproportionate to their population size and COVID-19 impact.
The authors describe white supremacists' and other extremists' use of the internet and introduce a framework for internet users to categorize virtual platforms and understand their potential to encounter extreme content online.
In this Perspective, the second in a RAND Corporation series on online extremist material, the authors explore how the internet affects extremist activities and how exposure to or consumption of such content influences the behavior of internet users.
The researchers explored the landscape of prison-based programs for incarcerated parents and considered the extent to which programs sought to mitigate the effects of policies and practices that disproportionately affect Black and Latinx families.
