Related UI Researchers

Publications on Race/Ethnicity/Gender

Ten promising undergraduate researchers have been chosen for the 2009 Urban Institute Summer Academy for Public Policy Analysis and Research. The students, who are college juniors, will spend June and July attending policy seminars, honing their analytical skills, and writing policy briefs under the guidance of Institute mentors.

As one of the fastest growing segments of the older population, Hispanics could become an important target for employers trying to attract and retain older workers. Older Hispanics participate in the labor force at relatively high rates and generally appear to be at least as healthy as non-Hispanic whites and healthier than blacks. Many, however, face substantial challenges in the workplace. They earn low wages and few benefits, and tend to work in physically demanding jobs that are often difficult to maintain into later life. Various policy reforms could boost older Hispanics' employment and earnings. Published by AARP (see link below.)

Historically, residential segregation constrained where minorities could live, contributing to disparities in education, employment, and wealth. Researchers interested in the well-being and future prospects of low-income working families have not yet explored how their residential patterns may vary across racial and ethnic lines or considered the implications of these patterns. Therefore, this paper explores differences in neighborhood characteristics among white, black, and Hispanic low-income working families. The findings suggest that policies aimed at reducing the persistent disadvantages facing minority low-income working families need to address the ways the neighborhoods in which minorities live may be compounding these disadvantages.

The Los Angeles Healthy Kids program provides health insurance to low income children in the county who have no other source of coverage (including undocumented children and children above the income limits for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families). These findings from a longitudinal survey of parents of young children in the program indicate that access to medical and dental care for enrolled children increased dramatically over time, use of the emergency room went down, and parents perceived improvements in the health status of their children. This analysis is one piece of a broader Urban Institute evaluation of the program.

This brief uses data from the 2007 Survey of Employers in the Low-Skill Labor Market to examine differences in the noncollege jobs held by workers of different races and ethnicities and the impact of these differences on wage rates.