Creating Healthier, More Equitable Communities

This project will use the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center's enhanced model to examine how the federal tax treatment of capital income and wealth might affect Black families differently than white families. We will also consider the racial equity effects of alternative tax policies—both those aimed at reducing the tax burden of all capital holders and those that would explicitly redistribute wealth in ways that could narrow the racial wealth gap.

Housing policy is disability policy, particularly for low-income households served by federal housing programs. People with disabilities are overrepresented in federally assisted rental housing, with 407 out of every 1,000 assisted households reporting a disability.

Senate Bill 535 and Assembly Bill 1550, combined, require the state to dedicate a minimum of 35 percent of revenues raised through Cap-and-Trade to communities that are environmentally overburdened and socially vulnerable. This was an explicit effort to promote health, economic, and racial equity in California's climate policy strategy. This project will research and evaluate the implementation of the $12.6 billion California Climate Investment program (SB 535 and AB 1550) in creating solutions that promote health, economic, and racial equity in environmentally disadvantaged communities.

Within the local government context, municipal code enforcement involves relatively entry-level decision makers operating across a highly uneven and diverse tapestry of neighborhoods and living situations. Implicit in code enforcement practices is a blending of objective health and safety concerns with highly subjective social and cultural norms.

This project will estimate the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a policy intended to reduce inequality through financial access, on disparities in entrepreneurship, employment, and poverty outcomes by race and ethnicity, asking whether the CRA reduces racial inequality in entrepreneurship, employment, and income. 

The burdens of racist policies have produced vastly worse pregnancy and birth outcomes for Black and Native populations relative to White populations in the United States. Because state Medicaid programs are the largest single payer for pregnancy care in the country, changes to Medicaid policies are an important way to implement structural interventions to promote racial equity. 

The removal and placement of Indian children away from their families and communities is a central component of historical trauma. Indian child welfare practice must contend with both the restoration of balance at the level of the individual the family and the community while negotiating with a system which has been an instrument of community disruption in the past. The 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was designed to address the race equity issues in the child welfare system that historically and disproportionately harm Indigenous youth and families. 

This study develops a national picture of home energy policies and programs, examines differences in receipt for three energy service cases, and explores barriers for households of color. Along with presenting the first cross-case comparison in the scholarly field, the research team hopes to inform discussions of improvements in energy providers' programming and prompt conversations around energy as another source of racial disparity. 

Infant mortality, defined as the death of a baby after birth up to one year of age, is a national indicator of population-level health. The United States has an average infant mortality rate (IMR) of 6 deaths per 1,000 live births, a rate that is more than 70% higher than other comparable, high-resource nations.

The research team will work with individuals with lived experience in the justice system to contribute to a participatory action research-informed approach, with the goal of understanding how the impacts and policy changes uncovered translate into the human experience—including implications for well-being, health, and mental health. 

This study will examine the extent to which health and wellness outcomes for tribal citizens are tied to state policies requiring state and local agencies to engage in government-to-government consultation with tribes when carrying out environmental decision-making activities impacting tribal cultural resources.

Reparations are one policy solution that can advance racial equity and justice in the United States and can decrease racial inequities in health and well-being. Yet reparations cannot be truly effective and reparative if they are not deeply accountable to the people who were harmed. Building on the authentic grassroots organizing and meaningful community engagement of the Racial Justice Coalition in Asheville, North Carolina, the research team will utilize qualitative methods to study the local reparations process underway in Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina.