Research Analysis
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Political Donations Indicate That Federal Court Clerks Skew Left
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Republicans refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, and now Democrats are threatening to do the same for President Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch. This gridlock is just one example of how all three branches of the U.S. federal government have become politicized. But…
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Understanding the 2016 U.S. Election: Evidence from European Populism
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Donald Trump’s unexpected electoral victory has raised several questions about the future of American and global politics, but one question that political pundits have focused on is how President Trump was able to garner a groundswell of populist support. Political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris evaluate two theories, one economic…
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Understanding Recidivism Through Child Abuse and Mental Health
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In 2016, Chicago struggled with the highest number of homicides the city has seen in more than a decade. Lawmakers are now scrambling to find solutions to curb the violence plaguing neighborhoods across the city. Recently, Illinois state legislators representing Chicago have suggested increased sentencing for repeat offenders as a…
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Harnessing GPS Data for the Future of Electric Cars in Europe
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Driving a Tesla may sound exotic, but electric cars are anything but a novel idea. The first successful electric automobile in the U.S. debuted in 1891. Over the last century, the development of electric vehicles (EVs) has been intimately tied to the oil market; in recent years, growing environmental concerns have…
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Examining Intergenerational Differences in Educational Performance of Immigrant Students
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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 increase in the flow of immigrants into…
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Rebuilding the City: Why Some Neighborhoods Survived the Housing Bubble and Others Did Not
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The Great Recession of the late 2000s impacted the lives of millions of people and caused upheaval in countless neighborhoods and cities. Nearly a decade since the recession began, we have seen some neighborhoods rebuild and recover, while others continue to flounder, plagued by scores of empty buildings still owned…
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Healthy Habits: Using Behavioral Science in Health Policy
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Encouraging healthy behaviors is a significant policy challenge because efforts to spark conversation around a health topic often fail to translate into strategies that actually change collective health behaviors. Although campaigns might be successful at spreading information, such messages may not inspire people to act differently. For example, when the…
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Does School Segregation Facilitate the Formation of Criminal Networks?
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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, if the behavior of an individual’s group…
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Less Qualified and Less Diverse: Race-Neutral Affirmative Action Hurts Chicago’s Exam Schools
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Selective admissions high schools, or exam schools, have long been at the center of education policy debates due to their struggles in balancing fair enrollment and improving diversity. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson that using race as an admissions requirement is unconstitutional…
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Is Training Informal Healthcare Providers The Solution to India’s Doctor Shortage?
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India, like other developing countries, is struggling with a scarcity of formally trained medical professionals, especially in rural and isolated areas. This gap has fueled the proliferation of informal healthcare providers, known pejoratively as “medical quacks.” These untrained providers provide more than 70 percent of primary care in rural India.…
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Calculating Success: Understanding Data in Chicago’s Charter Schools
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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 number of available charters within the city from 45…