Grant Category

Human Capital and Wellbeing

How does economic inequality affect the development of human capital, and to what extent do aggregate trends in human capital explain inequality dynamics?

The acquisition and deployment of human capital in the market drives advances in productivity. The extent to which someone is rich or poor, experiences family instability, faces discrimination, or grows up in an opportunity-rich or opportunity-poor neighborhood affects future economic outcomes and can subvert the processes that lead to productivity gains, which drive long-term growth.

How does economic inequality affect the development of human capital, and to what extent do aggregate trends in human capital explain inequality dynamics? To what extent can social programs counteract these underlying dynamics? We are interested in proposals that investigate the mechanisms through which economic inequality might work to alter the development of human potential across the generational arc, as well as the policy mechanisms through which inequality’s potential impacts on human capital development and deployment may be mitigated.

  • Economic opportunity and intergenerational mobility
  • Economic instability
  • Family stability
  • Neighborhood characteristics

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Long Term Own and Dynamic Complementarity Effects of the WIC Program

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project will first attempt to find the causal effect of exposure to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children in-utero and in childhood on one’s long-term outcomes. She will utilize a difference-in-difference design to exploit the variation in roll-out of WIC programs by county and evaluate educational attainment and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood. Using a regression discontinuity design, she will also test whether WIC funding was actually distributed to counties in a nonrandom way. In addition, she plans to examine whether and how the effect of WIC exposure is strengthened if one is also exposed to other large-scale public programs such as Head Start or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, contributing to our understanding of the long-run effects of potentially complementary income support programs.

The Child Care Workforce and COVID: Community Capacity and Investments as Buffers to the Pandemic

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $60,000

Grant Type: academic

This project will unpack the association between child care infrastructure, child care employment, and unemployment rates across counties, and examine whether it differs by geography, race, or poverty level. The research team will estimate the racial and ethnic differences in the local availability of child care and then test the relationship between early childhood education and both child care workers’ employment and wages, as well as overall labor force participation. The project will provide a longitudinal national measurement of child care supply at the county level and evaluate whether the stability of publicly funded child care through schooling bolstered local child care employment and earnings.

The Physics of Reparations: A Quantum Leap in Equity

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $40,000

Grant Type: academic

This project will explore whether reparations can close and have a lasting impact on the racial wealth gap. The research team will examine how parental income, wealth, and education affect offspring’s wealth as adults. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, they estimate an empirical model of the relationship between parents’ and children’s income, wealth, and education. They will then develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous accumulation of physical and human capital by heterogeneous households. Built into the model is an overlapping generations structure, whereby investments in children depend on parents’ income and wealth, and wealth can be inherited across generations. They will then use the model to examine the effect of different reparations policies and their effects on short- and long-run welfare, income, and human capital by race.

Does guaranteed income facilitate wealth and credit building among Black households in Georgia?

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $40,000

Grant Type: academic

This project partners with two guaranteed income experiments in Georgia to understand how guaranteed income affects asset development and credit-building. One experiment, in and around Atlanta, enrolled 654 low-income Black women in the summer of 2022. This experiment uses two different models of benefit delivery—equal-sized regular payments versus a one-time lump-sum payment followed by smaller regular payments. There is also a control group formed by those not randomly selected for the program. The other project takes 200 homeless clients from Project Community Connections Inc. and randomly assigns half of them to receive case management and housing assistance, while the other half receives those services plus $400 per month. For both experiments, the research team will link to credit report data and create a control group from the credit data to provide insight on racially patterned economic disparities and potential policy interventions. This paper will bridge guaranteed income—an income-maintenance intervention—with the study of wealth development and access to credit.

Missing pieces in the puzzle: Leveraging untapped archival data to connect New Deal housing policies to racial and spatial inequality

Grant Year: 2023

Grant Amount: $70,000

Grant Type: academic

This project will digitize previously thought to be destroyed Federal Housing Administration maps created in the 1930s and 1940s that outline redlining in FHA loans. Furthermore, the authors plan to digitize 10,000 Paid Loan Case files, which describe individual FHA loans. They will then look at how the information in these maps helped decide which neighborhoods were redlined and how important race was in those decisions. Lastly, they will look at who received FHA loans and how these loans affected homeownership.

The Self-Taught Economy: Open Access and Inclusion in the Tech Industry

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project asks, “Can access grant inclusion?” The author will explore this question in the context of open-access coding platforms that allow people to be self-taught coders. The technology sector is notoriously exclusionary, and computer science degrees are difficult to obtain because of the high cost of college, among other factors. Could open-access training platforms create a path for individuals from underrepresented communities of color to take advantage of the explosive job growth in the technology sector? This project will address these questions by combining survey data with in-depth interviews and observations of those who have participated in a specific learn-to-code platform. Preliminary findings indicate that the open-access platform does not aid those who have been excluded from high-quality jobs in the tech industry. The project seeks to understand why open-access training platforms are not leading to success. What barriers do female applicants or applicants of color face in job-seeking? This research will be especially informative for efforts to address job quality and wage stagnation by advocating for worker training. If completing worker training does not lead to the desired outcomes, then policymakers need to understand those programs as only part of the solution and identify necessary complements.

Experts

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Sari Pekkala Kerr

Wellesley College

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Ronald Mincy

Columbia University

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Janice Fine

Rutgers University

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Darrick Hamilton

The New School

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Ammar Farooq

Amazon

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Our funding interests are organized around the following four drivers of economic growth: the macroeconomy, human capital and the labor market, innovation, and institutions.

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