Over the course of the past half-century, the United States has seen the largest wave of immigration since the Age of Mass Migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act allowed for a significant inc... More »
People are hard-wired to form social networks, and an individual’s social network can play a role in shaping his or her behavior. Unfortunately, this social dynamic is as true for criminal networks as it is for more benign social networks. Among young people, ... More »
Charter schools have become a dominant fixture in the city of Chicago and across the United States. Nationwide, enrollment in charter schools has more than doubled in the past ten years. In Chicago during the early 2000s, legislative action increased the numbe... More »
Improving the quality of education worldwide continues to be a policy challenge. Recently, UNESCO estimated that 38 percent of children have not mastered the basics of reading and math, although over half of them have been in school for four years. One of the ... More »
Violence against women has long been and continues to be a widespread social problem across the globe. Statistics from UN Women—an United Nations entity dedicated to the empowerment of women—show that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either sexua... More »
Income segregation in neighborhoods in the United States has increased over the past few decades, but certain demographic groups have experienced a sharper rise than others. Only two-thirds of households in the United States are families, defined as two or mor... More »
Social capital is an important component in ensuring sound mental health in children. The more quality time a parent spends with their child, the better it is for the child’s development. This is just one way in which family social capital helps the child’s de... More »
Just 30 miles north of Boston on the Merrimack River is the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts. This industrial metropolitan area is home to almost 80,000 people, with a median household income of $32,851 and a poverty rate of 29.2 percent. Almost 40 percent of r... More »
In their research, Miguel Sarzosa and Sergio Urzúa examine how cognitive and non-cognitive skills can influence the occurrence of bullying, and how these skills can exacerbate the effects of bullying on outcomes such as depression, school attainment, satisfact... More »
In their paper, Ofer Malamud, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Miguel Urquiola examine—through the combined use of regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference techniques—whether there is a positive interaction between family and school environments in Roman... More »
A study shows the ways in which demographic changes regarding marriage, divorce, and cohabitation in the past 50 years have fostered family inequality across socioeconomic groups, causing negative impacts for children. More »
Evidence suggests that a one-standard deviation change in the depression and anxiety levels of caregivers is associated with a 0.43-standard deviation change in the negative internalization of symptoms among youth in their care. More »